Research Brief

• Vulnerability
• Working conditions
• Wage differentials

Working Paper

Gender earnings differentials in urban China by region and their changes during the first decade of economic reform are examined. It is found that the female–male earnings ratio increased during the early stage of reform. The male earnings premium...

• Economic development
• Urban economics
• Wage differentials

Working Paper

The food security scenario in South Asia has witnessed rapid progress over the last few decades, yet nutrition outcomes, especially those related to women and children, have failed to keep pace. This paper contends that the role of women in providing...

• Agricultural labourers
• Food security
• Poverty

Working Paper

This article evaluates the Chinese labour market by examining the role of human capital in wage determination. Using data from China’s Household Nutrition Survey, we estimate the returns to education in state-owned, collective-owned and private...

• Human capital
• Labour market
• Market segmentation

Working Paper

This paper uses data on individual earnings in manufacturing industry for five African countries in the early 1990s to test whether firms located in the capital city pay higher wages than firms located elsewhere, and whether such benefits accrue to...

• Education
• Manufacturing
• Wage differentials

Working Paper

Models of economic geography predict that transportation costs directly affect demand for goods and the supply of intermediate inputs. One of the reasons that international trade is concentrated in the coastal provinces of China is that they have...

• International trade
• Regional economics
• Transportation cost

Working Paper

The United Nations Millennium Declaration commits to halving extreme poverty between 2000 and 2015. The South African government has set a goal of halving poverty by 2014, although the meaning of this goal has not yet been defined. This article...

• Distribution
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty

Working Paper

In this paper, we use the new economic geography (NEG) framework to estimate the extent to which spatial wage disparities in the South African manufacturing sector are an outcome of economic forces such as market access. To test the relationship, we...

• Wage differentials
• Spatial econometrics
• Regional economics

Journal Special Issue

Getting an accurate picture of poverty and inequality trends and patterns in the world’s most populous country is central to understanding changes in global inequality and poverty – these alter significantly when China is included or excluded. China...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Poverty

Working Paper

Human capital models imply that both the distribution of education and returns to education affect earnings inequality. Decomposition of these ‘quantity’ and ‘price’ components have been important in understanding changes in earnings inequality in...

• Education
• Equality and inequality
• Wage differentials

Working Paper

The paper investigates the differences in private marginal returns to education between wage-employees and the self-employed in Uganda, using the Mincerian framework with pooled regression models. We use a two-wave household panel to estimate...

• Education
• Entrepreneurship
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

Since the beginning of the Chinese economic reforms in 1978, there has been a series of effort to reform the labour compensation practice in state- owned enterprises to strengthen the link between pay and productivity. Despite the reforms, however...

• Organizational behavior
• Post-communism
• Public policy (Law)

Working Paper

Using matched worker-firm data from three waves of the Vietnam Small and Medium Enterprises data, we examine whether workers are compensated with higher wages for working in vulnerable jobs and unfavourable working conditions. Wage equations indicate...

• Wage differentials
• Working conditions
• Small and medium enterprises

Blog

by Tony Addison October 2011

Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...

• Consumption
• Democracy
• Distribution

Working Paper

Public debate on the temporary employment services, or labour broker, sector in South Africa has focused on temporary workers’ wages and benefits. Empirical research is limited: temporary employment services cannot be accurately identified in recent...

• Temporary employment services
• Wage differentials
• Administrative data

Working Paper

• Economic equilibrium
• Labour productivity
• Labour supply