This paper uses the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys 1992–93 and 1997–98 to examine changes in the gender wage gap. The intertemporal decomposition of Juhn et al. (1991) indicates that changes in observed variables, skill prices and wage inequality have tended to narrow the gap, but the gap...

This paper examines the changes in relative earnings of workers with different education levels during Vietnam’s transition. It is found that females enjoy a higher return to education than males do in 1998, reversing the situation observed five years ago. A large fall in the returns to...

The impact of sectoral location on the gender earnings gap is important in the context of Vietnam’s transition into a market-oriented economy. More and more women are seeking employment in the private sector either in response to retrenchment in the public sector or in response to increasing...

The coexistence of the government sector, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and private sector provides a natural setting to examine the impact of economic reform in Vietnam on gender earning differentials. The three sectors reflect different degrees of influence of the Socialist ideology, with...

This paper makes three principal claims with respect to the economic performance of 14 Forum Island Countries (FICs) over the decade to 2005. First, the FICs (as a group) have performed below their potential. Second, it is the poor policy-choices rather than the handicaps of smallness and...

Theoretical studies suggest that corruption may counteract government failure and promote economic growth in the short run, given exogenously determined sub optimal bureaucratic rules and regulations. As the government failure is itself a function of corruption, however, corruption should have...

The paper explains the large differences in cross-country productivity performance by modeling and testing the effects of social barriers to communication on productivity and capital accumulation. In an optimal growth model, social barriers to communication that impede the formation of knowledge...

The paper analyses the economic payoffs from marine reserves using a stochastic optimal control model. The results show that even if the reserve and harvested populations face the same negative shocks, harvesting is optimal, the population is persistent and with no uncertainty over current stock...

Using data from what was once one of the world’s largest capture fisheries the economic value of a marine reserve is calculated using a stochastic optimal control model with a jump diffusion process. The results show that with a stochastic environment an optimal-sized marine reserve can...

The paper provides the first ex-post estimates of the effects on technical efficiency of input controls in a fishery. Using individual vessel data from the northern prawn fishery of Australia for the years 1990–1996 and 1994–2000, a stochastic production frontier is estimated to analyse the...