Economic inequality in Spain: the european community household panel dataset

This article uses data from the 1998 European Community Household Panel to study economic inequality in Spain. It reports data on the Spanish distributions of income, labor income, and capital income, and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the income mobility of Spanish households, and data on income inequality in other European countries and in the US. We find that income, earnings, and, especially, capital income are very unequally distributed in Spain and that economic inequality in Spain is well above the European average.     

Cohort patterns in Canadian earnings: assessing the role of skill premia in inequality trends

In this paper we document the pattern of change in age-earnings profiles across cohorts and evaluate its implications. Using synthetic cohorts from the survey of Consumer Finances over the period 1971 to 1993, wwe show that the age-earnings profiles of Canadian men have been deteriorating for more recentcohorts in comparison with older cohorts. We find this pattern for both high school and university educated workers. In no case do we find evidence that the return to gaining experience has been increasing over time, nor do we find increased within-cohort dispersion of earnings. We view these findings as conflicting with the hypothesis that increased skill premia largely explain the observed increase in dispersion of male weekly earnings. JEL Classification: J31, O33
Ce mémoire documente le pattern de changements dans les relations âges-gains d'une cohorte à l'autre, et en analyse les implications. Utilisant des cohortes synthétiques pour la période 1971–93, on montre que les profils âges-gains des hommes au Canada se sont détériorés dans les cohortes les plus récentes. On ne trouve pas de résultats qui montreraient que le rendement sur l'expérience accumulée s'est accru dans le temps ou qu'il y a dispersion accrue des gains à l'intérieur des cohortes. Les auteurs suggèrent que ces résultats contredisent l'hypothèse que des primes accrues pour les habiletés expliqueraient l'accroissement qu'on a observé dans la dispersion des gains des hommes au Canada.     

Distributionally-neutral tax changes for different inequality concepts

The paper introduces the notion of inequality-equivalence of tax functions. Desirable distributional properties are examined and some of their implications are derived. All this is done for different inequality concepts entering the analysis parametrically.     

Long term trends in fair and unfair inequality in the United States

This article analyses the microeconomic sources of wage inequality in the United States from 1967–2012. Decomposing inequality into factors categorized by degree of personal responsibility, education explains over twice as much of inequality today as 45 years ago. However, neither hours worked nor education, industry, marital status, or geographical location can explain the rise in income inequality. In fact, ‘unfair’ inequality (income disparity derived from non-responsibility factors) has risen faster than ‘fair’ inequality (income disparity derived from responsibility factors), regardless of the set of variables chosen as fair sources of inequality. We further examine income inequalities within gender and racial groups, finding substantial heterogeneity. Overall, using micro data to understand the sources of inequality and how these changes over time can provide better information for policymakers motivated to combat rising inequality.     

Multidimensional inequality comparisons: A compensation perspective

We provide a unified treatment of the two approaches pioneered by Atkinson and Bourguignon (1982, 1987) [3], [4] by resorting to compensation principles in the bivariate case. We treat the attributes of individual utility asymmetrically by assuming that one attribute can be used to compensate another. Our main result consists of two sufficient second-order stochastic dominance conditions. In the case where the compensated variable has a discrete distribution, the distribution of the compensating variable must satisfy a condition which degenerates to the Sequential Generalized Lorenz test for identical marginal distributions of the compensated variable. Furthermore, the distributions of the compensated variable must satisfy the Generalized Lorenz test.     

Finance and inequality: Channels and evidence

We provide a framework to interpret the recent literature on financial development and inequality. In many developing countries, access to funding and financial services by firms and households is still very skewed. Recent evidence suggests that poor access does not only reflect economic constraints but also barriers erected by insiders. Inequality affects the distribution of political influence, so financial regulation often is easily captured by established interests in unequal countries. Captured reforms deepen rather than broaden access, as small elites obtain most of the benefits while risks are socialized. Financial liberalization motivated to increase access may in practice increase fragility and inequality, and lead to political backlash against reforms. Thus financial reforms may succeed only if matched by a buildup in oversight institutions. Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (4) (2007) 748–773.     

中国实业投资率下降之谜:经济金融化视角

近年来中国实业投资率呈现持续下滑趋势,而宽松政策和刺激措施似乎都没有明显改善投资状况,实业投资率下降成为亟需解释之谜。本文以非金融企业通过金融渠道获利占比日益上升作为金融化特征的切入点,对我国实业投资率下降现象进行诠释。本文首先构建金融化环境下的微观企业投资决策模型,然后基于理论模型进行实证分析,探索金融化对实业投资率的直接与间接影响。研究表明:经济金融化显著降低了企业的实业投资率,并弱化了货币政策提振实体经济的效果;同时,金融资产的风险收益错配也抑制实业投资,且这种抑制效应随着金融化程度的提升而增强。     

Growth and income inequality: a canonical model

Summary. We develop an endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply, in which agents differ in their initial endowments of physical capital. In this framework, the growth rate and the distribution of income are jointly determined. The key equilibrating variable is the equilibrium labor supply. It determines the rate of return to capital, which in turn affects both the rate of capital accumulation and the distribution of income across agents. We then examine the impact of various structural shocks on growth and distribution. We find that faster growth is associated with a more unequal, contemporaneous distribution of income, consistent with recent empirical findings.Received: 7 October 2004, Revised: 18 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: O17, O40.Cecilia García-Peñalosa: Correspondence toGarcía-Peñalosa would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the Institut d’Economie Publique (IDEP), Marseille. Turnovsky’s research was supported in part by the Castor endowment at the University of Washington. The paper has benefited from seminar presentations at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Kansas, as well as from the comments of an anonymous referee.     

ICT and income inequality: a cross-national perspective

The importance of information and communications technology (ICT) for economic growth and development is widely researched and seemingly well understood, but the effect of such investments on income inequality is less well documented. On the one hand, improvements in infrastructure are expected to expand economic opportunities for previously underserved populations. On the other hand, ICT growth may exacerbate inequality due to differential access and skill premiums. We use panel data from 109 countries during the period 2001–2014 to examine the empirical connection between ICT and income inequality in a cross-national context. Our results suggest that the effect of ICT on income inequality depends both on the specific type of ICT and on the measure of income inequality. In addition, the magnitude of ICT’s effect on income inequality is comparable to that of more traditional forms of economic infrastructure. Finally, we find that the association between ICT and income inequality is conditional on other economic and political characteristics.     

中部塌陷：现象及其内在机制推测

比较不同区域近十多年的GDP和人均GDP发现:中部地区的经济增长既慢于东部也慢于西部,即所谓的"中部塌陷"现象从1997年开始出现并一直持续,如果考虑超越中部6省范围的更广意义上的中部,"塌陷"更明显. 改革开放后,东部沿海地区的快速发展即"东部崛起"是"中部塌陷"的宏观背景,根据新经济地理学对"东部崛起"的理论解释,进一步推测循环因果机制是"中部塌陷"的根本原因."中部塌陷"现象出现的具体时间和西部地区内部的区域分化等事实为上述推测提供了间接证据.     

Russia's Tax Crisis: Explaining Falling Revenues in a Transitional Economy

Market reforms in Russia have been threatened in recent years by a continuing, dramatic decline in tax revenues. This article analyzes the fiscal data in search of an explanation. While part of the drop in collections can be attributed to rate changes and transitional macroeconomic dislocation, a sizable residual reflects a progressively worsening tax administration. This, in turn, is traced to perverse incentives in the system by which tax revenues are shared between central, regional, and local governments in Russia's evolving federal system. As in other contexts, divided property rights reduce owners' motivation to invest in a jointly-owned asset.     

Heavy tails and upper-tail inequality: The case of Russia

Motivated, in part, by the recent surge of interest in robust inequality measurement, cross-country inequality comparisons, applications of heavy-tailed distributions and the study of global and upper-tail inequality, this paper focuses on robust analysis of heavy-tailedness properties and inequality in the upper tails of income distribution in Russia, as measured, mainly, by its tail indices. The study is based on recently developed approaches to robust inference on the degree of heavy-tailedness and their implications for the analysis of upper-tail inequality discussed in the paper. Among other results, the paper provides robust estimates of heavy-tailedness parameters and tail indices for Russian income distribution and their comparisons with the benchmark values in developed economies reported in the previous literature. The estimates point out to important similarity between heavy-tailedness properties of income distribution and their implications for the analysis of upper-tail income inequality in Russia and those in developed markets.     

Trading places: Does past growth impact inequality?

Using a broad panel dataset and semiparametric methods, the impact of past economic growth on current income inequality is examined. Increases in past short-run or medium-run growth rates raise current inequality. However, there is an inverted “U”-shaped relationship between past long-run growth and current inequality. Increases in past long-run growth rates raise current inequality in slow-growing economies and reduce current inequality in rapidly growing economies.     

On the dynamics of inequality

The dynamics of inequality are studied in a model of human capital accumulation with credit constraints. This model admits a multiplicity of steady state skill ratios that exhibit varying degrees of inequality across households. The main result studies equilibrium paths. It is shown that an equilibrium sequence of skill ratios must converge monotonically to the smallest steady state that exceeds the initial ratio for that sequence. Convergence is “gradual" in that the steady state is not achieved in finite time. On the other hand, if the initial skill ratio exceeds the largest steady state, convergence to a steady state is immediate.This paper is based on unpublished notes from 1990; see http://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/DevEcon/Notes/incdist.pdf. Two considerations suggest that these results may be worth reporting in print. First, the existence of a sizeable recent literature indicates that these relatively early notes may have value outside a filing cabinet or a private webpage. Second, Mukul Majumdar’s own research on economic growth with a nonconvex technology is an even earlier precursor to some of this literature, so the current outlet – a special issue in his honor – seems appropriate. Conversations with Glenn Loury simplified the proof of the main result. I thank Dilip Mookherjee for many useful discussions, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Funding from the National Science Foundation under grant number 0241070 is acknowledged. This paper is dedicated with much affection and warm admiration to Mukul Majumdar – or to Mukulda, as I always think of him – on the occasion of his 60th birthday.     

Income inequality and FDI: evidence with Turkish data

This article explores how foreign direct investment (FDI) and other determinants impact income inequality in Turkey in the short- and long-run. We apply the nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) modelling approach, which is suitable for small samples. The data for the study cover the years from 1970 to 2008. The empirical results indicate the existence of a co-integration relationship among the variables with asymmetric adjustment of the income distribution in the short- and long-run. The negative impact of FDI on the Gini coefficient, decreasing income inequality, is statistically significant in the short- and long-run, though with a quantitatively small impact in both cases. In the short run, GDP growth increases inequality initially, an effect that is reversed in the next period, increases in domestic gross capital formation decreases inequality, and increases in the literacy rate have very minor adverse effects on income equality. However, in the long run these variables have no statistically significant effects on the Gini coefficient. A reduction in the population growth rate reduces inequality in the short run but has no effect in the long run, whereas an increase in the rate reduces inequality in the long run but has no effect in the short run.     

Education policy and inequality: A political economy approach

Regression results show that more unequal societies tend to spend comparatively more on higher levels of education. In a two-period model with heterogeneous agents, this paper investigates the political determinants of this bias. In the first period, public education is financed by the incumbent government by issuing bonds. Investments in basic and higher education have conflicting effects on future labour income distribution and net returns to these investments depend on the tax and transfers system being selected in the following period through the democratic process. Our idea is that public investment in basic education, by decreasing future labour income inequality, may induce future policy-makers to redistribute resources through financial rents taxation, thus making unfeasible the issuing of debt to finance basic education. This will be the more probable the greater wealth inequality is.     

Money demand stability: Evidence from Spain

Using several tests for structural stability in regressions with I(1) variables and for the existence of cointegration in models with regime shifts, the empirical evidence on the existence of a structural break in the Spanish long-run demand for broad money (ALP2) is analysed.The results indicate that shifts affecting the demand for ALP2 in recent years have substantially altered its long-run properties. As to the cause of this structural break, emphasis is placed on the role played by the increasing openness of the Spanish financial system to international markets as obstacles to free capital movements have progressively disappeared.This paper represents the views of the author and should not be interpreted as reflecting those of any institution. I am grateful to J. Ayuso, J. J. Dolado, F. Restoy and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. The data may be obtained from the internet, http://wotan.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/oekonometric/engl/data.html. This paper was written while the author was working at the Banco de España.