This paper asks whether population growth is conducive to the sustainability of cooperation. A simple model is developed in which farmers who live around a circular lake engage in trade with their adjacent neighbors. The payoffs from this activity are governed by a prisoner's dilemma "rule of...

The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) program was implemented in response to "illness-led poverty" and poor state of healthcare in rural China. Supported by government subsidy, more and more poor rural households are now enrolled in the NCMS. This paper investigates the impact of the NCMS...

This paper identifies the migration policies that emerge when both the sending country and the receiving country wield power to set migration quotas, when controlling migration is costly, and when the decision how much human capital to acquire depends, among other things, on the migration...

A utilitarian social planner who maximizes social welfare assigns the available income to those who are most efficient in converting income into utility. However, when individuals are concerned about their income falling behind the incomes of others, the optimal income distribution under...

This paper develops a one sector, two-input model with endogenous human capital formation. The two inputs are two types of skilled labor: "engineering," which exerts a positive externality on total factor productivity, and "law," which does not. The paper shows that a marginal prospect of...

Using data from Pakistan, this study analyzed the effect of various individual, household, and community level characteristics on the probability that children engage in different activities. According to the existing trend of their prevalence, we considered five child's activities, namely:...

The 1994 reforms in China were remarkably successful in stabilizing the economy and raising revenues for the benefit of sustainable growth and permitting the central government to redistribute resources to poorer regions through an equalization framework. However, the rise of informal local...

This paper develops a model of voluntary migration into degrading work. The essence of the model is a tension between two "bads" that which arises from being relatively deprived at home, and that which arises from engaging in humiliating work away from home. Balancing between these two "bads"...

This study describes the macroeconomic determinants of health care spending in a broad context using time series data from Pakistan on economic, demographic, social, and political variables. The data spans a period from 1972- 2006 and was analyzed using cointegration and error correction...