In the beginning of the 1990s, the continuity of the Brazilian fiscal crisis and the emergence of globalization (commercial and financial liberalization, denationalization and privatization of part of the productive structure, etc.) led the public policy-making for mitigation of regional inequalities – at an integrated national level – to disappear even from the policy-makers’ imagination, bein...

After several decades of negative trends and short-term fluctuations, life expectancy has been increasing in Russia since 2004. Between 2003 and 2014, the length of life rose by 6.6 years among males and by 4.6 years among females. While positive trends in life expectancy are observed in all regions of Russia, these trends are unfolding differently in different regions. First, regions entered t...

The responsiveness of labor demand and unemployment to growth is an issue of ongoing political and academic interest. Economic growth is supposed to be the key to increase labor demand and reduce unemployment. Departing from Okun’s and Verdoorn’s law, most research on the (un)employment intensity of growth has focused on national disparities and the role of labor market institutions. Empirical ...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t We analyze a location-choice model with two vertically differentiated firms and two regions with different consumer income. We find that the high-quality producer settles in the poor region and the low-quality one in the rich region when income disparities are sufficiently high and goods are differentiated enough. This apparently counter-intuitive result is...

BACKGROUND Although the number of high-risk neonates has increased in Korea, hospitals were reluctant to open or maintain neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) due to the low medical cost. Consequently, there were regional disparities in facilities, equipment, and neonatal health outcomes. For these reasons, the Korean government began to invest in neonatal care during the last decade. We identif...

There is substantial evidence that on average, urban children have better health outcomes than rural children. This paper investigates the underlying factors that account for the regional disparities in child malnutrition in three Arab countries, namely; Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen. We use data on a nationally representative sample from the most recent rounds of the Demographic and Health Survey. ...