Developing Economies最新文献

This article seeks to investigate whether conflict-motivating coverage in newspapers increases during the election period, employing a quantitative text analysis of several major newspapers in postwar Iraq. In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the exclusion or inclusion of the former Baathist regime emerged as one of the most contentious issues in elections. Consequently, this study analyzes how the exclusion or inclusion of the former regime was asserted during election periods and the degree of emphasis in reporting, aiming to identify conflict-inspiring coverage during elections. The analysis encompasses over 500,000 articles from various prominent newspapers. In summary, while election cycles typically feature coverage that denies inclusiveness and exacerbates fragmentation, official government-affiliated newspapers tend to consistently underscore inclusiveness, even during election periods.

How many agendas has Xi Jinping put forth and promoted since taking office in 2012, and what are the types of agendas? How much of political attention has each agenda received, and how has the allocation of attention changed over time? We utilize a dataset of presidential statements, speeches, and reports from 2012 to 2022 and employed automated text analysis to identify major topics and terms associated with each topic. Our analysis reveals the identification of about 25 distinct policy agendas across diverse policy domains, with remarkable temporal variations between agendas in terms of the amount of leadership attention. Particularly, we find a significant shift in both the substance and relative weight of policy agendas between the first and second terms of Xi's tenure, indicating his adaptation and responses to changing domestic and foreign policy environments.

In this study, we examine the impact of minimum wages in Vietnam using individual-level data from the annual Labor Force Surveys (2012–20). During this period, the average real minimum wage increased by around 4% per year. Overall, we do not find significant effects from minimum wages on employment and monthly wage earnings. However, we find a considerable negative effect on workers' total working hours. Working hours per week are reduced by 0.38% for a 1% increase in the minimum wage. Since total wages remain unchanged, a reduction in working hours results in an increase in hourly earnings. A 1% increase in the minimum wage leads to a 0.32% increase in hourly earnings.

Although urbanization is an engine of growth, many African cities are overly crowded with massive traffic congestion and high housing prices, pushing the poor away to unfavorable settlements or remote suburban areas and making them commute long. The paper sheds light on the relationship between land value and urban attributes in a rapidly growing African city, Antananarivo, Madagascar. It shows that the land value gradient is steep with an elasticity of −0.78 with respect to trip time to the city center. Thus, housing prices are overshooting. Better urban planning is needed through improving transport accessibility by minibus. Other urban infrastructure services, such as piped water and garbage collection, and urban amenities are also important to add to land values. Spatial heterogeneity is found across different locations in the city. While some areas require clean water and climate resilience, others need more city amenities, such as parks.

Institutional quality has received considerable attention in recent years as a potential determinant of variation in the level of financial development across countries. The current paper critically reviews the literature linking formal and informal institutions and financial development. It discusses the main theories in this regard—namely, legal origins theory, the new political economy of finance, and cultural finance. The paper provides an overview of the latest empirical research in each of these areas with a focus on the data and methods used. The directions for further research are also highlighted.

This paper uncovers the nexus between global value chain participation and firm exit during COVID-19 using merged data from World Bank Enterprises Survey and the Enterprise Survey Follow-Up on COVID-19. Empirical results suggest that participation in global value chain could positively extend firm survival and is robust to several specifications, including alternative measures of firm exit and global value chain participation. Further analysis indicates that global value chain participation helps a firm to improve productivity, enhance bargaining power, and mitigate financial constraints, thereby lifting the firm survival. Our paper contributes to understanding how global value chain participation influences firm exit, suggesting several policy and managerial implications.