Because China maintains its system of one-party control by the Chinese Communist Party, it is argued that the Communist Party (CP) membership may result in a wage premium to party members. However, the impact of CP membership is not clear based on economic theories and hypotheses, and the evidence from empirical studies is also mixed, as it shows both positive and negative results. In this paper, we aim to perform a meta-analysis to examine the impact of CP membership on wage levels and investigate empirical evidence using 332 estimates extracted from 30 extant studies. The results of the meta-synthesis suggest that even though the effect size of CP membership is small, it is clear that CP membership positively affects wage levels. Testing for publication selection bias indicates that the collected estimates contain genuine empirical evidence. Moreover, the meta-regression analysis of literature heterogeneity shows that empirical evidence reported in previous studies is strongly and systematically determined by a series of study conditions such as the type of target ownership , the nature of the survey data, the wage percentiles used, the type of wage variables included, the estimation periods, and the utilization of various control variables.

While it is widely believed in South Asian countries that a well-functioning democracy is desirable, the political realities do not necessarily correspond to such expectations. In order to understand the political stability in such countries, it is important to examine people’s political trust in the government and administration. This paper explores the relationship between political trust and various perceptional variables such as feelings of political and social threat, evaluation of the government and administration, and the desire for democracy. The study uses opinion poll data from the mid-2000s in five South Asian countries to examine public perception of these issues. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) A higher evaluation of the government’s economic performance is likely to raise the level of political trust in government. (2) Political trust in the government and administration is likely to be enhanced by a favorable opinion on the democracy. (3) Perceptions of political and social threats often result in a lower evaluation of the government, including its economic performance. (4) People of lower economic status tends to be ignorant of democracy. (5) Social trust, which is the generalized trust of society, does not have any correlation with these variables.