This paper examines the evidence for regional convergence or catch-up in levels and growth rates of per capita income among the 16 major states in India between 1960 and 1992. The results — estimated using OLS, the within-group LSDV estimator, Re-Weighted Least Squares, and Least Trimmed Squares — establish that unconditional convergence in growth rates does not obtain, but that there is clear ...

From the capability approach, child poverty is understood as the deprivation of basic capabilities and related achieved functionings. This paper examines multidimensional poverty among Afghan children using the Alkire and Foster method. The case of Afghanistan is particularly relevant as years of conflict aggravated by several severe droughts, political insecurity, bad governance and on going v...

This paper examines the implications of international fragmentation of production for trade patterns in the Pacific Rim, with special emphasis on regional and global integration of countries in East Asia. The analysis reveals that the degree of dependence of East Asia on this new global division labour is much larger compared to the other countries in the Pacific Rim and Europe. Networkrelated ...

This paper investigates the causes of China’s output and trade balance fluctuations in the period of 1985–2000, with special attention to the role of the real exchange rate. The effects of four types of shock – the foreign supply shock, the domestic supply shock, the relative demand shock and the nominal shock – are examined, employing a near -VAR that embodies the long-run properties of a ‘dep...

While the incidence of extreme poverty fell dramatically in China over 1980–2001, progress was uneven over time and across provinces. Rural areas accounted for the bulk of the gains to the poor, though migration to urban areas helped. Rural economic growth was far more important to national poverty reduction than urban economic growth; agriculture played a far more important role than the secon...

The paper investigates the situation of middle-income economies around the world. Since 1965, only 18 economies with a population of more than 3 million and not dependent on oil exports have made the transition to being high income. Many more have not been able to move beyond the middle-income stage. We conduct statistical tests of differences between two groups of economies across a range of g...

This paper argues that technical change in the East Asian countries was sector-specific, took the form of learning-by-doing and was induced by relative factor prices. Usual growth accounting exercises do not account for this in the structure of the assumed aggregate production function and therefore miss these technical gains. Assumed or estimated elasticities of substitution are too high in th...

This paper has two main goals. The first is to provide a framework for studying children well being utilising a capability approach. A list of capabilities for children in developing countries is drawn and its methodological justification is provided. The second aim is to suggest an econometric model to estimate child well being, utilising the list of capabilities provided in the first part of ...

Following the 2008/9 financial crisis, China instituted a 4 trillion RMB stimulus package that was spent mostly on infrastructure, with a particular impact at local level. The goal was to sustain economic growth and preserve social stability. We use the Asian Barometer surveys from shortly before and after the stimulus to examine its impact on public trust in government, and find a reversal of ...