Competing Networks,Spatial and Industrial Concentration in the US Airline Industry

Abstract

The paper uses Gini decomposition analysis to evaluate changes in the spatial distribution and industry shares of total US air traffic, as well as analysing the decomposition components for individual airlines and airports for the period 1990–2002. The paper develops explicit relationships between two of the main decomposition schemes used in the income inequality literature and shows the insights that such analysis may provide for evaluation and examination of air transport networks and traffic distributions. A multi-dimensional Gini and its decomposition are derived using an adjustment method derived from the relationship between the two Gini decomposition schemes.     

The Effect of Income Distribution on the Ability of Growth to Reduce Poverty: Evidence from Rural and Urban African Economies

The present study examines the extent to which income distribution affects the ability of economic growth to reduce poverty, based on 1990s data for a sample of rural and urban sectors of African economies. Using the basic‐needs approach, an analysis‐of‐covariance model is derived and estimated, with the headcount, gap, and squared gap poverty ratios serving as the respective dependent variables, and the Gini coefficient and PPP‐adjusted incomes as explanatory variables. The study finds that the responsiveness of poverty to income growth is a decreasing function of inequality, albeit at varying rates for the three poverty measures: lowest for the headcount, followed by the gap and fastest for the squared gap. The ranges for the income elasticity in the sample are estimated at: 0.02–0.68, 0.11–1.05, and 0.10–1.35, respectively, for these poverty measures. Furthermore while, on average, the responsiveness of poverty to income growth appears to be the same between the rural and urban sectors, there are substantial sectoral differences across countries. The results suggest the need for country‐specific emphases on growth relative to inequality.     

On the suitability of income inequality measures for regional analysis: Some evidence from simulation analysis and bootstrapping tests

The paper looks at the sensitivity of commonly used income inequality measures to changes in the ranking, size and number of regions into which a country is divided. During the analysis, several test distributions of populations and incomes are compared with a ‘reference’ distribution, characterized by an even distribution of population across regional subdivisions. Random permutation tests are also run to determine whether inequality measures commonly used in regional analysis produce meaningful estimates when applied to regions of different population size. The results show that only the population weighted coefficient of variation (Williamson’s index) and population-weighted Gini coefficient may be considered sufficiently reliable inequality measures, when applied to countries with a small number of regions and with varying population sizes.     

The short-run impact of the stock market appreciation of the 1980s and 1990s on U.S. income inequality

The paper uses 1980 to 2000 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to study the short-run effect of a stock market appreciation on U.S. household income inequality. Fixed-effects regressions suggest that a stock market appreciation raises the incomes of stockholder households more than non-stockholder households. The Gini coefficients derived from the regressions reveal a perceptible but rather volatile increase that can be attributed to the stock market appreciation, especially for the latter parts of the 1980s and 1990s. When averaged by decade, the stock market appreciation raises the Gini coefficient by about 2% for the 1980s and by 3% for the 1990s.     

城市居民财产性收入与贫富差距的实证分析

利用1988～2009年国家统计局全国入户调查数据,本文研究了我国城市居民财产性收入的规模、组成、变化以及其对收入差距的贡献。采用基尼系数的分解方法,将每年的收入差距分解到各个收入成分的贡献,并发现与其他收入形式相比,财产性收入分布的基尼系数是最高的,对总收入差距的贡献也在迅速扩大,这一现象值得重视。本文还分别对东、中、西部地区进行了分析,发现财产性收入主要集中在东部地区。     

The resource curse and income inequality in Iran

This paper has investigated the relationship between oil revenues and inequality in Iran from 1969 to 2012. For this purpose, a threshold regression model has been used for capturing the non-linearity impact of the share of oil revenues in GDP on inequality. Two indicators have been applied for inequality: “Gini coefficient” and “the share of the richest decile of household expenditures which were relative to the poorest decile”. Estimation results of both inequality models suggested that there is a non-linear relationship as a u-shape between “oil revenues/GDP” and inequality in two regimes of oil revenues including high and low oil revenues regimes. The threshold level of oil revenues divided by GDP was about 10% for both inequality models. Before this threshold value, in low oil revenues regime, an increase of oil revenues would decrease income inequality, but after the threshold level and staying in high oil revenues regime, a rise in oil revenues would increase income inequality in Iran.     

The impacts of gender inequality in education on economic growth in Tunisia: an empirical analysis

The positive contribution of women’s education to the economy and society has long been known in many countries, particularly in developing countries, to attract more attention. A large number of literatures on women’s education clearly suggest that educating a woman is equivalent to educating a family and that this woman is better educated than her counterparts, men, in many respects. The low level of education of women in Muslim countries, most of which are in developing countries. The increase in the level of education depends on the elimination of gender inequalities in education. Muslim countries must use all their resources to achieve their economic development goals. Women’s participation in the economy is a major economic resource that is not widely used in Muslim countries. The literature (Dollar and Garti in Gender inequality, income, and growth: are good times good for women? World Bank Working Paper, 21–2 1999; Barro in The Contribution of Human and Social Capital to Sustained Economic Growth and Well Being, Canada Government, Portage 2001; Schltz 2002; Klasen 2002; Knowles et al. in Oxf. Econ. Pap. 54 118–149 2002) suggests that gender equality has a positive effect on economic growth. Taking into account Muslim countries, it can reasonably be argued that the rate of the gender effect on economic growth is higher in developing countries. This paper analyzes the impact of gender inequality in education on economic growth for tunisia will be explored, using econometric techniques. The document will take into account all variables of primary school graduation, obtaining a high school diploma, obtaining a high school diploma and obtaining a University degree with economic growth will be examined in detail for the period 1970–2009. At this level Women’s contribution to the economy is threefold. The first is that the increase in the level of human capital, as a result, decrease the fertility rate of women. The second argument is that the infant mortality rate could decrease by decreasing the fertility rate of women. Third, raising the level of education of women can affect the level of education of the next generation positively. In this context, in order to understand the long-term relationships between these variables, i.e. gender inequality in education and economic growth, a co-integration approach will be applied. The empirical results show that there is a long-term relationship between these variables.     

Humiliation at Work and Union Interest: An Empirical Analysis of Community Union Satisfaction as Related to Status Enhancement

How noneconomic benefits claimed by labor unions relate to union interest is not well articulated. Based on Torres and Bergner’s (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 38, 195–204, 2010; Psychotherapy, 49, 492–501, 2012) analysis of severe public humiliation, in which status enhancement underlies recovery, we examined an augmented relationship between humiliation at work (the underside of dignity at work) and willingness to join a union. As hypothesized, nonunion employees who were less detached from work showed more willingness to join when presented with evidence that members of a union were satisfied with community aspects of membership related to status enhancement above and beyond their satisfaction with economic aspects. Implications for union interest research and applications are discussed.     

The estimation of a family of measures of economic inequality

This paper shows that a broad class of measures of inequality (including those of Herfindahl and Theil) can be readily (and accurately) estimated from grouped data. The methods are similar to those developed earlier by the author for estimating the Gini index. The results are illustrated by estimating Thiel's index from tax data and show that the standard textbook grouping method of assuming that all incomes in any class are at the mid-point can lead to serious error in the resulting estimate of inequality.     

Does corruption affect income inequality and poverty?

This paper provides evidence that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty. An increase of one standard deviation in corruption increases the Gini coefficient of income inequality by about 11 points and income growth of the poor by about 5 percentage points per year. These findings are robust to use of different instruments for corruption and other sensitivity analyses. The paper discusses several channels through which corruption may affect income inequality and poverty. An important implication of these findings is that policies that reduce corruption will most likely reduce income inequality and poverty as well. Received: March 2, 2000 / Accepted: September 20, 2001     

Revisiting the issue of survivability and market efficiency with the Santa Fe Artificial Stock Market

The relevance of risk preference and forecasting accuracy for investor survival has recently been the focus of a series of theoretical and simulation studies. At one extreme, it has been proven that risk preference can be entirely irrelevant (Sandroni in Econometrica 68:1303–1341, 2000; Blume and Easley in Econometrica 74(4):929–966, 2006). However, the agent-based computational approach indicates that risk preference matters and can be more relevant for survivability than forecasting accuracy (Chen and Huang in Advances in natural computation, Springer, Berlin, 2005; J Econ Behav Organ 67(3):702–717, 2008; Huang in J Econ Interact Coord, 2015). Chen and Huang (Inf Sci 177(5):1222–1229, 2007, 2008) further explained that it is the saving behavior of traders that determines their survivability. However, institutional investors do not have to consider saving decisions that are the most influential investors in modern financial markets. Additionally, traders in the above series of theoretical and simulation studies have learned to forecast the stochastic process that determines which asset will pay dividends, not the market prices and dividends. To relate the research on survivability to issues with respect to the efficient markets hypothesis, it is better to endow agents with the ability to forecast market prices and dividends. With the Santa Fe Artificial Stock Market, where traders do not have to consider saving decisions and can learn to forecast both asset prices and dividends, we revisit the issue of survivability and market efficiency. We find that the main finding of Chen and Huang (2008) that risk preference is much more relevant for survivability than forecasting accuracy still holds for a wide range of market conditions but can fail when the baseline dividend becomes very small. Moreover, the advantage of traders who are less averse to risk is revealed in the market where saving decisions are not taken into account. Finally, Huang’s (2015) argument regarding the degree of market inefficiency is confirmed.     

The consequences of pandemic-driven inequality

• ▀ According to our analysis, the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to exaggerate global inequality, leading to more aggregate debt among lower earners and higher savings for those at the top. The surge in savings will raise demand for safe assets, which would put downward pressure on long-term government bond yields - already depressed from a chronic shortage of safe assets.
• ▀ Historically, pandemics can trigger a rise in inequality, even over medium-term periods. Pandemics damage confidence in using in-person services, which disproportionately exposes low-skilled work to displacement. A unique feature of this pandemic is that the ability to work from home is proving a key factor in determining job losses - those that can are typically in higher paid jobs.
• ▀ The poorest households spend more of their income on essentials such as housing and basic food. When their incomes fall, they still have to spend on these essentials and so are often forced to take on debt. Conversely, the richest often consume near maximum capacity, so any additional income goes into savings to support future consumption.
• ▀ Higher aggregate savings would, all else equal, drive up demand for safe assets and therefore lower interest rates. Other factors such as weak nominal GDP growth, demographics and a chronic shortage of safe assets will also contribute to keeping yields depressed over the next five years.

     

“Speculative Influence Network” during financial bubbles: application to Chinese stock markets

We introduce the Speculative Influence Network (SIN) to decipher the causal relationships between sectors (and/or firms) during financial bubbles. The SIN is constructed in two steps. First, we develop a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) of regime-switching between a normal market phase represented by a geometric Brownian motion and a bubble regime represented by the stochastic super-exponential Sornette and Andersen (Int J Mod Phys C 13(2):171–188, 2002) bubble model. The calibration of the HMM provides the probability at each time for a given security to be in the bubble regime. Conditional on two assets being qualified in the bubble regime, we then use the transfer entropy to quantify the influence of the returns of one asset i onto another asset j, from which we introduce the adjacency matrix of the SIN among securities. We apply our technology to the Chinese stock market during the period 2005–2008, during which a normal phase was followed by a spectacular bubble ending in a massive correction. We introduce the Net Speculative Influence Intensity variable as the difference between the transfer entropies from i to j and from j to i, which is used in a series of rank ordered regressions to predict the maximum loss (%MaxLoss) endured during the crash. The sectors that influenced other sectors the most are found to have the largest losses. There is some predictability obtained by using the transfer entropy involving industrial sectors to explain the %MaxLoss of financial institutions but not vice versa. We also show that the bubble state variable calibrated on the Chinese market data corresponds well to the regimes when the market exhibits a strong price acceleration followed by clear change of price regimes. Our results suggest that SIN may contribute significant skill to the development of general linkage-based systemic risks measures and early warning metrics.     

Replacement rates and labour market behaviour

This paper studies how the replacement rate, defined as the ratio of disposable income when unemployed to expected disposable income if beginning to work, affects individuals’ transition rate from unemployment. Linked register data, representing a local Finnish labour market in 1996, are analysed with piece-wise constant exponential hazard models. Results suggest that the effect of the replacement rate and, thus, of “unemployment traps”, is fairly modest. It does not seem to change with time spent unemployed. The impact on the transition rate into employment is lower than on the transition rate out of the labour force. Unemployment insurance recipients are found to be less sensitive to changes in the replacement rate than are unemployment assistance recipients.     

Learning to save in a voluntary pension system: toward an agent-based model

Mandatory pension systems partially replace old-age income, therefore the government matches additional life-cycle savings in a voluntary pension system. Though the individual saving decisions are apparently independent, the earmarked taxes (paid to finance the matching) connect them. Previous models either neglected the endogenous tax expenditures (e.g. Choi et al., in: Wise (ed) Perspectives in the economics of aging, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 81–121, 2004) or assumed very sophisticated saving strategies (e.g. Fehr et al. in FinanzArchiv Pub Finance Anal 64:171–198, 2008). We create twin models: myopic workers learn (i) from farsighted workers using public information (analytic model) and (ii) also from each other (agent-based model). These models provide more realistic results on saving behavior and the impact of matching on the income redistribution than the earlier models.

     

Managing the Contingent Workforce—Gaining the Advantages, Avoiding the Pitfalls

Part-time employment arrangements constitute a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. labor force. Such employment arrangements offer advantages to both employers and employees. Part-time employees offer employers reduced wage and benefit costs, workforce flexibility, aid for special projects, replacement fill-ins and a chance to preview candidates for full-time employment. Part-time work enables employees to supplement family income, enjoy flexible hours as well as a change in job environment and a chance to substitute for full-time employment when there is no choice. The advantages of contingent employment come at a cost. Employers must comply with laws and give up control over much of the employment relationship in order to avoid co-employment status and to gain the benefits of contingent employment. Employees in contingent work arrangements frequently do not qualify for many of the benefits available to full time employees. Suggestions made for managing contingent workers may reduce some of the problems, but they would also remove some of the advantages.     

非正规就业与城镇居民收入分配：1991~2009年

本文利用1991-2009年的CHNS数据使用分位数回归法及基于反事实分析的FFL分解法分析非正规就业比重及非正规就业与正规就业的收入差距变动对城镇居民收入分配的影响。结果表明：第一阶段（1991-2000）,非正规就业的比重及两者之间收入差距的增加是城镇居民收入差距扩大的重要原因;第二阶段（2000-2009）,非正规就业比重的增加依旧引起了收入差距的扩大,但两者之间收入差距的下降引起了收入差距的缩小,但前者大于后者,造成第二阶段城镇居民收入差距的扩大。     

Decreasing average cost in private schools,existence of majority voting equilibrium,and a policy analysis for Turkey

The existing models of mixed public–private school systems usually capture only the decreasing average cost faced by public schools, whereas empirical studies find evidence of it for private schools as well. Motivated by this, an equilibrium model of a mixed public–private school system is studied in this paper, whereby private schools also face decreasing average cost over enrollment. In the model, households, heterogeneous with respect to exogenously specified income and child’s ability, choose among a public and a private school. Private school charges tuition whereas public school is free. Public school spending is financed by income tax revenue collected from all households and the tax rate is determined via majority voting. Achievement of a child depends on its ability and education spending. Under the assumptions on the parameters of the model, a joint lognormal distribution of income and ability, and a Cobb–Douglas utility, majority voting equilibrium is numerically shown to exist. The model is calibrated to match certain statistics from the 2013 Turkish data. Using the calibrated model, we compare the benchmark for a mixed public–private school system with a pure public school system to understand the impact of shutting down some of the private schools in Turkey following the July 15 coup attempt. We find that mean achievement and variance of achievement after high school is \(0.039\%\) higher and \(0.013\%\) lower respectively in a pure public school system.     

Global estimates of growth–inequality–poverty (GIP) triangle: evidence from World Bank’s classification countries

This study extended the concept of ‘growth–inequality–poverty (GIP) triangle’ by using the principle component approach which allows us to composite different poverty and inequality indicators into one single index that contains most of the useful information from the original dataset. Using the idea of GIP triangle, this study examines the long-run relationship among weighted poverty index (which comprises headcount ratio, poverty gap and squared poverty gap); weighted inequality index (i.e., Watts Index, Gini Index and MLD Index) and average monthly per capita income in the designated 138 countries according to World Bank’s classification over a period of 2005–2010. The data set mainly contain countries’ unit record household survey at least one which is conducted between the countries during the sample period. The regression model encompassing the impact of economic growth and income inequality on poverty reflects that income inequality increases poverty while economic growth decreases poverty. It indicates that the impact of inequality in increasing poverty is a somewhat greater than that of growth in average income in reducing overall poverty in a sample countries. The other regression model encompassing the impact of economic growth and poverty on income inequality showed that the poverty itself is also likely to be a barrier for poverty reduction; and inequality seems to predict lower future growth rates. The final regression model depicting the impact of poverty and income inequality on mean income of the household suggests that poverty itself reduces mean income of the household while income inequality increases economic growth. The results are interesting and simply suggest that whenever social institutions malfunction, the incidence of damage would usually be distributed unevenly over the society’s members.     

Asymmetric causality between military expenditures and economic growth in top six defense spenders

This study applies asymmetric causality tests, proposed by Hatemi-J (Asymmetric panel causality tests with an application to the impact of fiscal policy on economic performance in Scandinavia, 2011; Empir Econ 43(1):447–456, 2012), to revisit military expenditures-growth nexus for the world top six defense spenders during the period of 1988–2013. Empirical results indicate that the military expenditure-led hypothesis is supported in China and Japan. However, the growth-led hypothesis is supported in four countries, i.e. France, Russia, Saudi Arabia and US. Except for Saudi Arabia, strong economic growth by no means implies automatic expansion of military expenditures. Defense planning in these countries is a matter of matching their limited resources to attain the suitable priorities. The more threats they perceive, the more spend for defense. This evidence provides useful insight into the behavior of other potential defense suppliers.