Andy McKay

This special issue presents seven empirical studies that investigate the complex and multidimensional relationship between inequality and rural development in Asia, with a primary focus on China and Bangladesh. The selected papers examine how different forms of inequality—income, consumption, opportunity, and gender—interact with key drivers of rural transformation, including digitalisation, agricultural modernisation, migration, and administrative reform. Collectively, the studies reveal that while technological innovations such as rural e‐commerce and digital finance can reduce inequality among disadvantaged groups, their benefits are not uniformly distributed. Structural inequalities continue to constrain the adoption of climate‐smart agricultural practices, exacerbate gender disparities in labour reallocation, and reinforce unequal childhood health outcomes. The findings highlight the need for inclusive, context‐sensitive policies that address both economic and institutional barriers to equitable development. By offering rich empirical insights and actionable policy implications, this special issue contributes to a deeper understanding of how to foster inclusive growth and sustainable transformation in rural Asia.

Researchers based in poorer countries typically face major challenges in publishing their work in international journals, compared to those faced by researchers in the wealthier countries of Europe and North America. This paper studies this issue based on the experience of papers submitted to the Review of Development Economics, an important international development economics journal. It presents an analysis of submissions and success in publication, based on the fortunes of all papers submitted to the journal between 2015 and April 2022, disaggregated by the country in which the corresponding author is based. Authors based in low and middle income countries accounted for 33% of publications in this period, though they accounted for 61% of the submissions received. A main factor was that these papers were significantly less likely to be sent for review by the journal; if reviewed, they were also less likely to be accepted than papers from authors in high income countries, though that differential is much less stark. This analysis is presented in the interests of transparency and to encourage discussion, but also to raise issues the journal needs to address. The paper finishes by reviewing, based on co‐editor experience over this period, issues and potential responses.

This special issue contributes to the development economics literature by highlighting the role of information communication and technologies (ICTs) in supporting rural and agricultural development. It is comprised of nine papers. Key findings from this special issue include: (1) internet use increases rural consumption diversity and agricultural productivity; (2) smartphone use empowers rural women in household decision‐making and off‐farm work participation; (3) smartphone‐based agricultural extension services boost rural income growth; (4) a lack of ICT infrastructure and inadequate skills to use digital technologies are two key factors that lead to digital poverty traps for smallholder rural farmers; (5) ICT adoption increases the probability of rural households' access to credit and empowers rural women and farm households in relatively less developed regions to access credit; (6) digital financial inclusion reduces farmers' vulnerability to poverty; and (7) e‐commerce adoption increases both sales prices and marketing costs, but the magnitude of increasing the former is higher than the magnitude of increasing the latter, which finally contributes to a higher gross return. This special issue also proposes practical instruments and implications for advancing the application of ICTs in rural areas to accelerate rural and agricultural development in the digital age.

This article is an introduction to this Special Issue on Rethinking in Regional Integration in Africa which is based on a collaborative research project, implemented by African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the leading economic capacity building institution in Africa, and funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB). This project is very timely given the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which came into force on 01 January 2021. In this introduction, we first provide a brief background on regional integration in Africa. We next describe the AERC project and the process of selection of the papers and then provide a quick summary of the ten published papers and their contributions.

This article studies the dynamics of income inequality among a panel of rural households in Thailand. In contrast to the many cross-section studies of income inequality, the article exploits a long panel data set to examine lifetime trajectories of household inequality. It finds that income inequality is decreasing over time within cohorts delineated by decennial birth dates of heads of household. This decline in inequality primarily arises from differences in receipt of remittances from adult children of the head of household who live outside the village of origin. On average, poorer households receive remittances from a larger number of children, the annual amount remitted per child is a greater proportion of household income than in richer households, and the importance of remittances in household incomes grows as the head of household ages.

We present evidence of how researchers from developing countries are represented in three areas of research: conference presentations, articles in journals, and citations. We find that the bulk of research on development and development policies in the South is conducted by researchers from the North. Southern universities represents 9% of conference presenters, while 57% of conference presenters are from Northern universities. There has been no evidence of improvements over time. Fewer than one in six of the articles published in top 20 development journals from 1990 to 2019 were by Southern researchers, while close to three-quarters were by Northern researchers. The remaining 11% were collaborations by Southern and Northern researchers. Additionally, there are also fewer citations per article for Southern-authored articles than for Northern-authored articles.

This paper draws on the results of telephone surveys conducted to assess the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the young people of two longitudinal cohorts (aged 19 and 26 years old at the time) of the four countries that participate in the Young Lives research programme: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. We first review the pandemic experiences of these four countries, which differed significantly, and report on the responses of the individual young people to the pandemic and the measures taken by governments. Our main focus is on how the pandemic and policy responses impacted on the education, work and food security experiences of the young people. Unsurprisingly the results show significant adverse effects in each of these areas, though again with differences by country. The effects are mostly more severe for poorer individuals. We stress the challenges that COVID-19 is creating for meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, in particular in making it more difficult to ensure that no one is left behind.

This paper draws on the results of telephone surveys conducted to assess the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the young people of two longitudinal cohorts (aged 19 and 26 years old at the time) of the four countries that participate in the Young Lives research programme: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. We first review the pandemic experiences of these four countries, which differed significantly, and report on the responses of the individual young people to the pandemic and the measures taken by governments. Our main focus is on how the pandemic and policy responses impacted on the education, work and food security experiences of the young people. Unsurprisingly the results show significant adverse effects in each of these areas, though again with differences by country. The effects are mostly more severe for poorer individuals. We stress the challenges that COVID-19 is creating for meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, in particular in making it more difficult to ensure that no one is left behind.

For many decades the worldwide expansion of supply and demand for skilled work has been at the heart of economic growth and development. In this paper, we use the 1991–2010 panel data from the Kagera Health and Development Survey in North West Tanzania to examine the work outcomes at the end of the panel of those who were young (7 to 24 years) in the baseline. First, we illustrate the significant extent to which advanced education and skilled work go hand in hand. We analyse specifically the baseline household factors enabling individuals to access more advanced education, and we find quite different results by gender. We then analyse, again by gender, how this education plus baseline characteristics matter for attaining skilled or professional work. We also study the importance of migration in the process and the degree of intergenerational mobility in skilled work. The results show vividly how some key household factors help young men advance in their education and career, while childcare in particular retards the progress young women can make.