Basic income in the United States: Redefining citizenship in the liberal state

This paper examines citizenship-based arguments for work-conditioned welfare and basic income. I argue that the most common citizenship-based justifications for work requirements—the paternalistic and civic republican arguments—are flawed because of their selectivity, and that the only defensible citizenship-based justification for work requirements is the socialist model, which enforces work requirements universally on all. I offer as a liberal alternative a radically pluralist notion of citizenship, with a kind of universal economic suffrage at its core, to justify an unconditional basic income in the US.     

Local Area Inequality and Worker Well-Being

This paper uses General Social Survey data linked to Census data to investigate the effect of local area income and income inequality on worker well-being. Others have found a robust negative correlation between reference group income and self-reported well-being. However, in many cases the reference group is defined as a large geographic area. This paper adds to the literature in two ways. First, it considers multiple nested geographic reference groups with US data. Second, it explicitly considers income inequality in addition to the level of income. It is found that both income and income inequality are positively associated with well-being at the census tract level, but negatively associated at the county level. Further, the effect of inequality on well-being decreases as income increases at the census tract and county level, while it increases at the state level.     

The Dilemmas of Technology: A Review Article

During the 1990s, all of the European transition economies (TE) experienced a major recession and suffered from the explosion of income inequality. However, distribution of income between labor and capital differed greatly from one group of post-communist countries to another. The paper discusses and analyzes linkages between models of capitalism that emerged in former communist countries in the 1990s and the outcome of capitalist transition for labor in terms of income distribution and inequality. It is based on the estimates of the Marxian rate of exploitation and other indicators of labor income performance during the reform period.     

The Future Be Damned: Economists’ Optimism and Nuclear Proliferation

Lower income households make much heavier use of costly financial services, such as payday loans, check cashing services, auto title loans, and many more. These services are crafted for, targeted to, and distributed through outlets in lower income neighborhoods. In other words, there are extensive provisioning systems designed specifically to deliver such products and services to these households. Such marketing aimed at lower income groups reduces both their wealth and welfare relative to upper and upper middle groups.     

INEQUALITY COMPARISONS IN A MULTI‐PERIOD FRAMEWORK: THE ROLE OF ALTERNATIVE WELFARE METRICS

This paper considers the use of alternative welfare metrics in evaluations of income inequality in a multi‐period context. Using Norwegian longitudinal income data, it is found, as in many studies, that inequality is lower when each individual's annual average income is used as welfare metric, compared with the use of a single‐period accounting framework. However, this result does not necessarily hold when aversion to income fluctuations is introduced. Furthermore, when actual incomes are replaced by expected incomes (conditional on an initial period), using a model of income dynamics, higher values of inequality over longer periods are typically found, although comparisons depend on inequality and variability aversion parameters. The results are strongly influenced by the observed high degree of systematic regression toward the (geometric) mean, combined with a large extent of individual unexpected effects.     

The impact of minimum wages on employment of low‐wage workers

This study provides empirical evidence on the impact of a minimum wage increase on employment of workers in the formal sector who have wages below the minimum level in Vietnam. Using the difference‐in‐differences with propensity score matching and the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys of 2004 and 2006, the article finds that the minimum wage increase in 2005 reduced the proportion of workers having a formal sector job among low‐wage workers. Most workers who lost formal sector jobs became self‐employed.     

From necessities to imaginary worlds: Structural change,product quality and economic development

In this paper we explore how innovation and structural change affected economic development in the long run, by which we mean a period such as the one between the industrial revolution and the present. We separate the period since the industrial revolution into two sub periods, which we call ‘necessities’ and ‘imaginary worlds’ and focus on three trajectories, increasing productive efficiency, increasing output variety, and increasing output quality and differentiation. In the paper we show how a combination of the three trajectories gave rise to the transition between ‘necessities’ and ‘imaginary worlds’ and propose a mechanism of economic development which could have given rise to the type of economic system which we can observe today. To create growing output quality and differentiation higher competencies were required. These higher competencies required higher levels of education and demanded higher wages, which contributed to raise consumers' purchasing power. These phenomena, combined with the income effect of the creation of new sectors, generated the disposable income with which consumers could purchase the new, higher quality, non necessities, goods and services generated by innovation. In the paper we study the impact of several model parameters on the stability of the virtuous circle previously described.     

新型农村社会养老保险替代率精算模型及其实证分析

本文依据2009年国务院发布的《关于开展新型农村社会养老保险试点的指导意见》,运用保险精算的方法,构建出新农保替代率精算模型,并依据该模型对新农保替代率进行实证分析。通过分析提出以下建议:以农民人均纯收入作为缴费基数,实行比例费率制;鼓励农民尽早开始参保并保持长期缴费;鼓励参保农民选择较高的档次标准缴费;新农保个人账户基金应当在适当情况下进行市场化投资运营;继续强化土地保障和家庭保障的作用。     

Towards Trade Equalisation: A Network Perspective on Trade and Income Convergence Across the Twentieth Century

An enduring dynamic of the twentieth century is the dramatic expansion of global trade with increased partners, goods, frequency and volumes. Most trade explanations such as the Heckscher–Ohlin, new trade theory, gravity models, and Ricardo and Sraffa focus on how bilateral import and export volumes and intermediate input goods are driven by decreased financial and information transaction costs. Extending work on trade flows and economic development, we derive several network measures of degree, betweenness and eigenvector centrality from dyadic trade flows from 1960 to 2009. We then empirically explore the interactive effects of trade connectivity, economic production and stages of development on income convergence and trade equalisation. We empirically find clear patterns towards a new phenomenon, both sigma levels and beta rates trade convergence and equalisation for our entire sample. Visualising sigma and beta convergence for seven major trading nations from 1920 to 2010, we believe offers new insights into economic development theory if only beginning to loosen the knot of trade, growth and globalisation.     

Recession,terms of trade,and immigrants

The current literature does not adequately analyze how economic crisis affects employment of immigrants in host countries. It is generally believed that immigrants lose jobs and return home during recession. We show that recession may instead help relatively unskilled immigrants when it leads to terms-of-trade improvement in the host country, and when the unskilled sector is protected by minimum wage regulations. We also derive the condition under which the income gap between natives and immigrants falls.