Welfare services such as healthcare, elderly care, and education are key to ensuring quality of life generally, and vital for rural communities across urbanizing countries. While these sectors are largely tax-financed, several countries have established quasi-markets to achieve competition...

We study optimal housing taxation in a Mirrleesian framework where individuals differ in both labor productivity and land ownership. Housing services are produced by combining scarce land with structures that require maintenance, which can be performed either in-house or through market...

Exposure to extreme weather events and other adverse shocks has led to an increasing number of humanitarian crises in developing countries in recent years. These events cause acute suffering and compromise future welfare by adversely impacting human capital formation among vulnerable...

Rural roads, serving as vital links between remote areas and economic centers, play an indispensable role in rural development. This paper investigates the relationship between rural road development and various economic outcomes in China from 2008 to 2021. Based on comprehensive novel road...

This paper estimates the direct and indirect effects of agriculture on health and nutrition using nationally representative survey data collected by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in 1994, 1997, 2005 and 2015. The models estimated serve as examples of general frameworks that can be used...

The close relationship between tourism and transportation in the context of sustainable mobility development and increased environmental and sustainability policies is widely debated in the scientific literature. The Romanian railway transport system may represent an ignored opportunity that is...

Rural electrification plays a crucial role in improving the socioeconomic conditions of underserved communities by enabling extended productive hours, enhancing access to education, and empowering women. However, conventional grid extension is often economically unfeasible for remote areas due...

The concept of multi-local living is a current and growing phenomenon in Nordic countries and elsewhere. However, the changes that multi-local causes in the temporal recreational activity of areas have remained unknown because official population statistics are not capable of detecting the...

The Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas (LTVRA) pointed out that rural areas require an appropriate form of governance to avoid fragmentation and ensure the integration of rural policies. Recently, Italian law stressed the importance of Food Districts (FDs), including Rural Districts (RDs), to cope...

Taking the case of rural South India, we explore the universality of the Big Five personality traits and their stability over time. We then investigate the effects of two exogenous shocks on trait stability: the demonetisation of November 2016 and the second COVID-19 lockdown. We use an original...

Tourism-oriented livelihoods represent a significant avenue for transforming traditional agricultural practices. Analyzing their environmental impacts offers a novel perspective for exploring the complex interplay among human production, consumption, and the ecological environment at a micro...

This paper presents a novel approach to measuring sustainable and inclusive well- being in cities and rural areas of the European Union (EU). By introducing a measure of social progress in cities, towns and suburbs, and rural areas, the study explores - for the very first time - the contribution...

Women entrepreneurs in rural South Africa face structural and socio-cultural barriers in accessing funding. This study investigated how existing financial structures and support programs influence the sustainability and growth of female-owned businesses in rural areas. Using bibliometric...

Administrative digital accessibility drives rural development, particularly in peri-urban areas where traditional governance meets the growing demands for digital services. The study examines the role of digital tools in local administrations in supporting citizen engagement and responsiveness...

The rapid popularization of digital technology is profoundly altering the employment landscape; especially in rural areas, the digital economy has opened up unprecedented channels to narrow the gender gap in non-agricultural employment. This study utilizes data from the China Family Panel Studies...

Mental health conditions are strongly associated with reduced labor market participation, but the underlying channels through which such conditions impact labor supply remain unclear. This paper reports on a two-phase study decomposing this relationship by examining (i) job take-up decisions;...

We examine fiscal policies and parliamentary activities of minority governments in the German states. Our sample includes the 16 German states over the period 1981-2024. The results show that minority governments implemented similar fiscal policies to majority governments. Minority governments...

India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enacted in 2005, is an experiment of major significance. Drawing on official statistics, this paper presents a broad-brush retrospective on MGNREGA's first 20 years, focusing inter alia on employment generation, the...

This paper explores the links between conflict, land, and indigenous peoples on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The analysis takes advantage of the unprecedented concurrence of data from the 2020 census, an independent conflict data monitor for Mindanao, and administrative...

We investigate convergence among Indian states between 1981 and 2016 using the distance of any state from the leading state as our key variable. We focus on the role of three major sectors-agriculture, manufacturing, and infrastructure-in achieving convergence. Prima facie, we do not find any...

Infrastructure development is a major factor of interstate inequality in India's economic development; however, much less is known about the causes of unequal infrastructure development. Using 11 parameters, this study develops three separate indices: physical, social, and financial...