持续性不平等的原因及其动态演化综述

本文回顾了近半个多世纪以来有关收入和财富分配持续性不平等的原因及其动态演化方面的理论,包括收入和财富分布的随机过程模型、新古典框架下不平等的动态演化理论、人力资本投资对持续性不平等的影响、不完全资本市场下持续性不平等的动态演化、经济增长中持续性不平等的动态演化以及其他各种机制对不平等动态演化的影响等。论文还对有关持续性不平等理论的发展脉络和内在演化逻辑进行了梳理,并在此基础上对现有文献进行了总体评述,并对今后研究的发展方向作了简单讨论。     

新古典模型中收入和财富分配持续不平等的动态演化

本文讨论了当个人劳动能力和偏好存在差异的情况下,资本收入和劳动收入分配的差异如何通过遗产机制影响收入和财富分配的持续性不平等程度。论文分析表明:在偏好、个人劳动能力和个人收入的随机冲击的影响下,如果市场是完善的,整个经济系统存在收入和财富分配的稳定不平等状态,而且,这种稳定的不平等状态与初始的财富分配的不平等和一次性的产权配置都是无关的。最后,本文分析了资本收入税和劳动收入税对持续不平等程度的影响,通过分析指出:从长期来看,在劳动能力和初始财富存在差异而偏好没有差异的情况下,征收劳动收入税比征收资本收入税更有利于改善由于能力差异所造成的持续不平等。     

新古典模型中收入和财富分配持续不平等的动态演化

本文讨论了当个人劳动能力和偏好存在差异的情况下，资本收入和劳动收入分配的差异如何通过遗产机制影响收入和财富分配的持续性不平等程度。论文分析表明：在偏好、个人劳动能力和个人收入的随机冲击的影响下，如果市场是完善的，整个经济系统存在收入和财富分配的稳定不平等状态，而且，这种稳定的不平等状态与初始的财富分配的不平等和一次性的产权配置都是无关的。最后，本文分析了资本收入税和劳动收入税对持续不平等程度的影响，通过分析指出：从长期来看，在劳动能力和初始财富存在差异而偏好没有差异的情况下，征收劳动收入税比征收资本收入税更有利于改善由于能力差异所造成的持续不平等。     

金融市场对我国通货膨胀与收入不平等关系的调节作用分析——基于财富门槛视角

笔者通过构建数理模型,从金融市场财富门槛的角度对我国通货膨胀与收入不平等的关系进行了理论分析。结果发现,一方面,在我国金融市场不发达的现实背景下,形成了规避通货膨胀的财富门槛,财富门槛降低了低收入群体规避通货膨胀的效果,扩大了收入差距;另一方面,通货膨胀又在事实上提高了金融市场的财富门槛,进一步加剧了收入不平等状态。利用我国1978年～2009年时间序列数据,进行Johansen协整检验与Granger因果检验,结果验证了金融市场对我国通货膨胀与收入不平等关系的正向影响作用。     

不平等来源、亲社会行为与反社会行为——来自实验室实验的证据

不平等是经济社会发展面临的重要问题，它会导致社会分化，影响社会关系。本文在实验室中构造了四种典型的收入不平等来源：风险选择、自然运气、个人努力和竞争机制。以此为背景，本文研究了个体之间的收入不平等来源对他们的亲社会行为与反社会行为分别有着怎样不同的影响，并尝试从个体优势不平等厌恶和劣势不平等厌恶心理的角度对这一影响的机理进行解释。本文的主要发现是：自我财富水平并不直接影响亲社会行为和反社会行为，但自我财富相比他人财富越多，亲社会行为水平越高；他人财富相比自我财富越多，反社会行为水平越高；各类不平等来源可直接影响亲社会行为；优势不平等厌恶能够影响亲社会行为，劣势不平等厌恶能够影响反社会行为。     

分配不平等的影响因素分析

分配不平等涉及到政治、经济、文化及社会等各个方面。在全球化的背景下,分配不平等已成为各国政府、政策制定者、学者关注的焦点。本文对分配不平等的影响因素进行了深入分析,并研究了各国在将财富和收入导向公平的探寻之路中的各种措施。目标在于对各国在实践过程进行数据收集和分析,也为我国在调整财富分配和收入分配提供更多的经验借鉴。     

城乡收入不平等及其动态演化模型构建——中国城乡收入差距变化的理论机制

文章借鉴贝克尔的"家庭收入不平等及世代之间的变动性"理论,构造了一个城乡收入不平等及其动态演化模型,从要素投入的角度,将物质资本、人力资本和政府投入作为基本变量来分析我国城乡收入差距产生及其动态演变的理论机制.研究结果表明:转变传统城乡不平衡发展战略,政府加大对农村的人力资本投资,并辅之以必要的农村基础设施和软环境建设,将会显著提高当期的农村人均收入,并通过逐期传递,增加以后各期的农民收入,从而可以有效缩小我国的城乡收入差距.     

劳动力市场的性别收入不平等及女性贫困——一个人力资本和社会资本理论的双重视角

本文从动态演化的视角将贫困视为一种持续加深的非正常状态,这种状态在经济上一个显著的特征是收入低于正常人群,以缪尔达尔的循环积累因果原理为理论基础,试图通过劳动力市场上的性别收入不平等来解释女性普遍的、持续的相对贫困状态.性别差异下的劳动力收入不平等形成了女性群体与男性群体之间长期的收入差距,使得女性更易陷入相对贫困状态,造成不断加剧、难以摆脱的贫困循环.人力资本和社会资本理论是解读性别收入不平等及女性贫困的有力视角.人力资本理论视角下,家庭照料及生育责任影响女性人力资本竞争力,女性人力资本积累进程与企业需求偏差较大,生育保险责任内化为企业人力资本投资风险,女性人力资本回报率低造成人力资本投资的恶性循环.而社会资本理论通过女性资本欠缺和回报欠缺、职业机会差异和职业内收入差距两个路径解释了性别收入不平等的发生机理.     

住房价格不平衡对我国财富分布格局的影响研究

规范财富积累机制对我国分阶段推进共同富裕和实现经济高质量发展具有重要意义。通过分析房屋财富差异影响家庭财富不平等的典型事实，基于房价上涨、房屋财富升值与财富不平等程度加剧的理论逻辑并利用2011—2019年中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）数据的研究结果表明，住房价格不平衡将会加剧同类型家庭内部、不同类型家庭之间的财富不平等程度，严重恶化我国财富分布格局。家庭财富积累动机与房价水平的双重差异是造成同类型家庭内部财富不平等的核心因素，房价上涨的财富效应与房价水平的双重差异是导致不同类型家庭之间财富分化的关键成因。数值模拟显示，降低收入差距与城乡差距、缓解财富顶层集中、有效管控住房投资行为、切实降低消费性住房购买压力等措施，对我国规范收入分配秩序和财富积累机制、改善财富分布格局具有积极意义。     

货币政策对收入不平等的作用效应:一个文献研究

各国解决收入不平等的通用政策工具是财政政策。但近年来的研究表明,运用财政政策来解决收入分配不平等具有局限性,学者们开始关注货币政策对于解决收入不平等的作用和效应。本文梳理了国内外关于货币政策对收入分配不平等影响效应的文献,发现货币政策对收入不平等的效应主要有四种:财富变动效应、金融市场效应、资本形成效应、就业效应。这些效应相互作用,并通过通货膨胀、经济增长与总产出来间接影响收入分配。     

Intergenerational mobility and macroeconomic history dependence

A large literature on ‘endogenous inequality’ has argued that persistent differences in macroeconomic performance across countries can be explained by historical inequality, owing to indivisibilities in occupational choice and borrowing constraints. These models are characterized by homogenous agents, a continuum of steady states (SSs) and lack of mobility in every SS. We show that introducing (even a little) heterogeneity in order to generate SS mobility shrinks the SS set dramatically. Mobile SSs are generically locally unique and finite in number. Sufficient conditions for global uniqueness and convergence of competitive equilibrium dynamics are provided.     

Inequality, Growth, and the Dynamics of Social Segmentation

In this paper, we investigate the link between the dynamics of society segmentation into communities and the growth process, based on a simple human capital growth model. Using coalition theory, we study the socioeconomic dynamics of an economy over time, characterize it and prove that the economy converges to a steady state partition that may be segmented. Eventually the whole economy tends to a balanced growth path, exhibiting persistent inequality in the case of segmentation. We then provide sufficient conditions on initial inequality and the technology parameters generating local and global externalities for obtaining a segmented society in the long run. On the whole, the relationship between inequality and growth cannot be assessed without taking into consideration the stratification phenomena at work in society over time.     

Credit constraints,growth and inequality dynamics

This paper examines how credit constraints affect the dynamics of wealth and thereby the dynamics of capital and output growth. We develop standard Ak growth models that display transitional dynamics, contrary to general belief, once the complete credit markets assumption is relaxed. The mechanism is that credit constraints make individual productivity differences persist, which in turn leads to the persistence of income inequality. The dynamics of inequality is jointly determined with the dynamics of aggregate capital. The economy thus passes through a transitional period of inequality, individual and aggregate capital dynamics before it converges to a long-run balanced growth path. The application of the model to the analysis of intergenerational mobility and inequality dynamics suggests substantial economic and policy significance. In particular, introducing credit constraints to the Barro Ak model, public investment could have an indirect impact on growth via its effect on inequality and mobility.     

A theory of persistent income inequality

This paper explores the dynamics of income inequality by studying the evolution of human capital investment and neighborhood choice for a population of families. Parents affect the conditional probability distribution of their children's income through the choice of a neighborhood in which to live. Neighborhood location affects children both through local public finance of education as well as through sociological effects. These forces combine to create incentives for wealthier families to segregate themselves into economically homogeneous neighborhoods. Economic stratification combines with strong neighborhoodwide feedback effects to transmit economic status across generations, leading to persistent income inequality.     

A political economy perspective on persistent inequality,inflation, and redistribution

In this paper we examine the dynamics of the link between inequality and inflation from a political economy perspective. We consider a simple dynamic general equilibrium model in which agents vote over the desired inflation rate in each period, and inequality is persistent. Inflation in our model is a mechanism of redistribution, and we find that the link between inequality and inflation within any period or over time depends on institutional and preference related parameters. Furthermore, we find that differences in the initial distributions of wealth can yield a diverse set of patterns for the evolution of the inflation and inequality link. Relative to existing literature, our model leads to more precise predictions about the inflation–inequality correlation. To that end, results in the extant empirical literature on the inflation and inequality link need to be interpreted with caution.     

On poverty traps,thresholds and take-offs

Recent studies on economic growth focus on persistent inequality across countries. In this paper we study mechanisms that may give rise to such persistent inequality. We consider countries that accumulate capital in order to increase the per capita income in the long run. We show that the long-run growth dynamics of those countries can generate a twin-peak distribution of per capita income. The twin-peak distribution is caused by (1) locally increasing returns to scale and (2) capital market constraints. These two forces give rise to a twin-peaked distribution of per capita income in the long run. In our model investment decisions are separated from consumption decisions and we thus do not have to consider preferences. Empirical evidence in support of a twin-peak distribution of per capita income is provided.     

Wealth inequality and employment fluctuations

This paper is concerned with the business cycle dynamics in search and matching models of the labor market when agents are ex-post heterogeneous. We focus on heterogeneity caused by different labor market histories and the resulting wealth inequality they generate. We show that this inequality implies wage rigidity relative to a complete insurance economy. The fraction of wealth poor agents prevents real wages from falling too much in recessions, since small decreases in income imply large losses in utility. Analogously, wages rise less during expansions than in models with homogeneous workers as small increases are enough for poor workers to accept job offers. This mechanism reduces the volatility of wages but generates more volatile employment levels.     

Assessing the Equalizing Force of Mobility Using Short Panels: France, 1990–2000

In this paper, we document whether and how much the equalizing force of earnings mobility has changed in France in the 1990's. For this purpose, we use a representative three-year panel, the French Labour Force Survey. We develop a model of earnings dynamics that combines a flexible specification of marginal earnings distributions (to fit the large cross-sectional dimension of the data) with a tight parametric representation of the dynamics (adapted to the short time-series dimension). Log earnings are modelled as the sum of a deterministic component, an individual fixed effect and a transitory component which is assumed first-order Markov. The transition probability of the transitory component is modelled as a one-parameter Plackett copula. We estimate this model using a sequential expectation-maximization algorithm.
We exploit the estimated model to study employment/earnings inequality in France over the 1990–2002 period. We show that, in phase with business-cycle fluctuations (a recession in 1993 and two peaks in 1990 and 2000), earnings mobility decreases when cross-section inequality and unemployment risk increase. We simulate individual earnings trajectories and compute present values of lifetime earnings for various horizons. Inequality presents a hump-shaped evolution over the period, with a 9% increase between 1990 and 1995 and a decrease afterwards. Accounting for unemployment yields an increase of 11%. Moreover, this increase is persistent, as it translates into a 12% increase in the variance of log present values. The ratio of inequality in present values to inequality in one-year earnings, a natural measure of immobility or of the persistence of inequality, remains remarkably constant over the business cycle.