The South Asia region is home to the largest pool of individuals living under the poverty line, coupled with a fast-growing population. The importance of access to basic infrastructure services on welfare and the quality of life is clear. Yet the South Asia region's rates of access to...

We study the effect of international trade and freeness of trade on interregional inequality within countries. While most studies focus on single countries and only some use a small panel of countries, we use the two largest databases available to examine these issues. One database is provided...

We develop a monopolistic-competition model of closed two-sector one-factor economy, where agents are (continuously) heterogeneous in their entrepreneurship abilities and choose between being employees or entrepreneurs. The sufficient conditions in terms of variable elasticity of substitution...

Distribution of fiscal income among municipalities - which are constitutionally federal official entities in Brazil - is highly unequal. Given conurbation processes and intense urbanization in the second half of the past century, some municipalities concentrate resources and quality public...

Social disparities in Russia were increasing since transition started in the 1990s on the background of decline of all social indicators. In the first decade of 2000-th growth of economy contributed to improvement of wellbeing of population. Policy of budgetary alignment and state social policy...

Natural advantages determine where agglomerations emerge. Also, efficiency and economies of scale determine how many agglomerations subsist and how they interact, forming complex urban hierarquies. Moreover, physical characteristics influence the way humans divide land into irregular parcels we...

It has been shown that a person's relative income - compared to a reference group - has a negative impact on self-reported happiness. This suggests that people who aim at increasing their happiness should try to find a better-paid job if their relative income is low. In this paper we study this...