Behind rising inequality and falling growth

This paper investigates why the upsurge of top income shares has coincided with economic slowdowns in the US since the late 1970s. I argue that a fast-growing unearned income from ‘wealth residual’ – the unexplained increase in wealth that is not accompanied by any increase in real output – lies behind them. To support this hypothesis, I measure wealth residual from the national accounts and associated statistics, and then perform a set of panel regressions using a comprehensive panel dataset of the US at the state level. The estimation results demonstrate that the rapid growth of wealth residual during the last four decades has contributed to a co-evolution of fast-growing inequality and falling growth.     

Too afraid to vote? The effects of COVID-19 on voting behaviour

This paper studies the causal effect of local exposure to COVID-19 on voting behaviour and electoral outcomes using evidence from the regional elections held in Spain on 12 July 2020. Exploiting the variation in exposure to COVID-19 and using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we show that turnout was between 2.6 and 5.1 percentage points lower in municipalities that experienced positive cases of COVID-19. In addition, the results show a substantial increase in the probability of voting for nationalist parties. We discuss the idea of perceived fear being the potential mechanism driving our results.     

Variations in farm consumption and their relationship to income: an empirical investigation of Illinois farm households

Empirical tests of household consumption have yielded mixed results regarding the validity of the life cycle/permanent income (LCPI) hypothesis. A significant problem with such studies is the difficulty in finding sufficient micro-level data on household expenditures. By using the recent rich quantity of such data in the Farm Business Farm Management (FBFM) data for Illinois farms from 1995 to 2009, the study reported here for farm households should provide more consistent results regarding the LCPI hypothesis. Applying an empirical model based on the LCPI hypothesis, this article identifies the determinants of farm consumption and the relationship to income. This study provides evidence that current income changes are not significant in explaining the consumption changes of farm households, thus supporting the LCPI hypothesis for farm households.     

Social signaling and interorganizational relationships: Lessons learned from the professional sports industry

In today’s connected economy, interorganizational relationships are increasingly important. Whether government-to-government, political party-to-political party, business-to-business, department-to-department, or some other interorganizational pairing, these relationships can provide organizations with signals used to identify and better respond to changes in their environment and in their interorganizational relationships. This enables astute organizations to not only understand how others will interpret the social signals they send, but also to shape those signals in ways that will improve their interorganizational relationships. We illustrate this herein, using the public and readily recognizable relationships involved with labor relations in the professional sports industry. We show how social signals can explain the way organizations change and adapt to their environments, and how these changes send messages to related organizations. Finally, we provide a set of recommended advice for managers based on this case analysis.     

Does computer penetration increase farmers’ income? An empirical study from China

The diffusion and adoption of modern information technology provide new chance for China to close urban-rural income gap. This paper uses China's provincial panel data from 2002 to 2013 to investigate the effect of computer penetration on rural residents' income. A public program aiming to connect every village with broadband Internet and other rural facilities provides plausibly exogenous variation in rural residents' availability and adoption of the broadband Internet, which is used to explore the instrument variable for rural computer penetration. The results show that rural computer penetration tends to increase rural residents' income over time, but the average effect remains limited. The dynamic panel threshold effects model, which allows for both the threshold variable and other covariates to be endogenous, is further used to explore the constraints of the income-increase effect of rural computer penetration. It shows that the effect is at least doubled over the average effect estimated from instrument variables method, once the digital divide causes are removed. Our findings have important implications for the government to increase rural residents' income and reduce urban-rural income gap by encouraging rural computer usage and removing the digital divide.     

A continuous income-based grade gap decomposition on university course grades

The earnings premium for education, and higher education in particular, is well documented. This article examines the college achievement gap between students coming from positions of high and low socio-economic status. Other papers have also looked at this issue, often by employing, at least in part, an Oaxaca decomposition. Past papers artificially divided socio-economic status into binary groups of high and low, in order to employ the decomposition. Socio-economic status is innately a continuous variable. Therefore, we implement a continuous version of the Oaxaca decomposition. Higher socio-economic students are both slightly better prepared in terms of observable characteristics and have better returns to their characteristics than lower socio-economic students. Notable differences across results obtained from the binary and continuous decomposition methods are discussed.     

Political Economy of Regional Integration: The Northeast Asian Model Revisited

It is found that the intra-regional trade share or functional integration plays an important role in the institutionalization of regional integration not only in the European Union (EU) but also in Northeast Asia. The crisis factor, which is measured by the regional economic growth rates, is empirically significant in Northeast Asia but not in the EU. This situation confirms the crisis model for Northeast Asia that emphasizes the stimulating role of crisis for the institutionalization of regional integration. However, the political leadership factor is not empirically significant in Northeast Asia and in the EU, and this finding does not support the political leadership model that emphasizes the facilitating role of political leadership for the institutionalization of regional integration.     

Factor allocation,economic growth and unbalanced regional development in China

On the basis of development accounting techniques and a factor misallocation framework, we use panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2013 to assess how factor allocation affects economic growth and unbalanced regional development in China. In particular, we decompose economic growth into three parts, namely sector productivity (SP ), factor market efficiency (FME ) and factor endowment (FE ). We then conduct counterfactual analyses to investigate the short and long‐run roles of factor allocation in the income distribution across provinces. The results show that SP , FME and FE can explain 23%, 8.5% and 68.5% of economic growth, while labour, capital and energy reallocation account for aggregate productivity growth of about 47%, −4.8% and −0.1%. Furthermore, when the factors are efficiently allocated, transferring labour (capital, energy) from agriculture (service, industry) to the other sectors will increase the income per capita by 29.5% and 42.5% in the short and long term. Meanwhile, efficient factor allocation accounts for 32% and 29.7% of aggregate productivity and reduces the income variation across provinces by 25.5% and 23% in the short and long run, respectively.     

Reorganizing School Lunch for a More Just and Sustainable Food System in the US

Public school lunch programs in the United States are contested political terrains shaped by government agencies, civil society activists, and agri-food companies. The particular organization of these programs has consequences for public health, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This contribution draws on political economy, critical food studies, and feminist economics to analyze the US National School Lunch Program, one of the world's oldest and largest government-sponsored school lunch programs. It makes visible the social and environmental costs of the “heat-and-serve” economy, where widely used metrics consider only the speed and volume of service as productive work. This study demonstrates that such a narrow understanding of the labor of lunch devalues care and undercuts the potential for school food provisioning to promote ecological and feminist goals. Further, it proposes a “high road” alternative and outlines an agenda for reorganizing school food provisioning to maximize care in all its dimensions.     

计划生育政策如何影响城乡收入差距——基于CFPS数据的实证分析

基于CFPS（2010）数据，实证分析计划生育政策对城乡收入差距的影响机制，并利用Oaxaca-Blinder分解法和RIF回归分解法测度了计划生育政策对城乡收入差距的贡献度。结果表明：（1）计划生育政策有利于子代收入的提高，且对城镇的收入边际效应大于农村；（2）政策允许家庭生育数量越多，越不利于农村家庭子代收入的提高，家庭一旦超生则会显著降低子代收入，而且相对于农村家庭子代而言，城镇家庭超生对子代收入的负向影响更大；（3）计划生育政策对城乡收入差距的拉力呈现出U型特征，对低、高收入群体的影响较大，而对中等收入人群的城乡收入差距贡献相对较小，其中政策允许生育胎数起到了决定性作用。因此，计划生育政策应统筹全局、因地制宜、奖惩兼施，以提高农村的人力资本水平和子女的教育质量，促使城乡居民生育率和人力资本水平趋同。