The emerging land-related unrest in China poses a pressing challenge on the legitimacy of the government. Through the perspective of good governance, the paper examines the role of land in government financing and its economic and political cost, as well as the erosion of government¡¯s...

China faces a water scarcity problem that is severe by international standards. Many factors, including rapid urbanization and environmental degradation etc, have been challenging the water service delivery in China. Since water scarcity and quality have impact on the poor, reforms to the water...

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of provincial tax performance in China, paying special attention to the recent fiscal reforms in the 1980s and in 1994. Using provincial panel data for the period 1986-2004, our analysis consists of two steps. First, a combined fixed time effects and...

The last decade has witnessed a world trend of fiscal decentralization in the developing countries as an escape from inadequate growth and inefficient governance. With respect to China, fiscal decentralization has been a fundamental aspect of its transition to a market economy; and the country...

Based on the theoretical literature of fiscal decentralization, we discuss the political economy of inter-governmental fiscal arrangements in China and examine how a transfer-based decentralization impacts on local public employment. A theoretical model is built to show that compared to their...

China's remarkable poverty alleviation is quite uneven across regions in the last quarter of the century. It is important to explore why China has such huge disparity in poverty distribution in spite of overall dramatic economic growth and the vast improvement in per capita income. The aim of...