Explaining International and Intertemporal Variations in Income Inequality

This paper explores the propositions that, income inequality is relatively stable within countries; and that it varies significantly among countries. A new and expanded data set provides broad support for both propositions. Drawing on a political economy and capital market imperfection arguments to explain the intertemporal and international variation in inequality, the empirical analysis shows that the predicted variables associated with the first argument (a measure of civil liberties and the initial level of secondary schooling) and the second argument (a measure of financial depth and the initial distribution of land) are indeed important determinants of inequality.     

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.     

收入不平等、社会犯罪与国民幸福感-来自中国的经验证据

本文利用世界价值观调查数据,对中国收入不平等与居民主观幸福感之间的关系及其作用机制进行了实证研究。结论发现,中国的收入不平等对居民的主观幸福感有显著的负面影响,而且它对农村居民和低收入者的负面影响要显著大于城市居民和高收入者。此外,收入不平等除了自身对居民的幸福感有显著负面影响外,还通过社会犯罪间接地对居民的幸福感产生负面影响。     

Inequality and Economic Growth: A Global View Based on Measures of Pay

This paper discusses two issues in the relationship betweeninequality and economic growth: the data and the econometrics.We first review the income inequality data set of Deiningerand Squire (D&S), which, we argue, fails to provide eitheradequate or accurate coverage, whether through time or acrosscountries. We then introduce our own measures of the inequalityof manufacturing pay, based on UNIDO's Industrial Statistics.These provide indicators of pay inequality that are more stable,more reliable and in our view also more comparable across countries,than the D&S data. Turning to the fabled "Kuznets" relationship between inequalityand economic development, we diagnose several common econometricproblems in the literature, including measurement error andomitted variable bias. By taking steps to account for theseproblems, and by introducing a more complete panel data setbased on pay inequalities, we seek more reliable inferencesconcerning the relationship between inequality, national incomeand economic growth. We find evidence that generally supportsKuznets' specification for industrializing countries: pay inequalitytends to decline as per capita income increases, though withsome tendency for the relationship to curve up for the richestcountries. After 1981 two findings emerge. First, per capitaGDP growth slowed dramatically in most countries, increasinginequality along the augmented Kuznets curve. Second, thereis a global and macroeconomic effect that produces rising inequalityin our data, independent of GDP or its changes. The timing ofthis effect suggests a link to the high real interest ratesand global debt crisis of the period beginning in 1982. (JELC23, D31, J31, O11)     

Economic Growth And Global Inequality In Long Run Perspective

Book reviewed in this article:
Angus Maddison, The World Economy, A Millennial Perspective     

Inequality, Redistribution, and Economic Growth

This paper provides a critical review of the recent literature on inequality and growth. After discussing historical and more recent distributional trends as well as empirical evidence on the relationship between inequality and growth, I focus on recent explanations of the inequality-growth puzzle. I consider both the impact of the functional and the personal distribution on long-run growth rates. A final section discusses a rather neglected issue in the recent literature: the impact of expected demand for innovation decisions.     

Decomposing Global Inequality

This paper provides an intuitive additive decomposition of the global income Gini coefficient with respect to differences within and between countries. In 2005, nearly half the total global income inequality is due to income differences between Europeans and North Americans on the one side and inhabitants of Asia on the other, with the China‐USA income differences alone accounting for six percent of global inequality. Historically, income differences between Asia and Europe have driven a large part of global inequality, but the quantitative importance of within‐Asia income inequality has increased substantially since 1950.     

Global Innovation Races,Offshoring and Wage Inequality

In the 1970s and 1980s the US position as the global technological leader was increasingly challenged by Japan and Europe. In those years the US skill premium and residual wage inequality increased substantially. This paper presents a two‐region, quality‐ladder growth model where the lagging economy progressively catches up with the leader. As the innovation gap closes, the advanced country experiences fiercer foreign technological competition that forces its firms to innovate more. Faster technical change increases the skill premium and residual inequality. Offshoring production and innovation plays a key role in shaping the link between international competition and inequality.     

Growth, Inequality, and Integration: A Political Economy Analysis

The issue of political integration between two countries (more generally two political constituencies) for economic reasons is studied within the context of a simple endogenous growth model with a productive public good financed by taxation. We consider two countries that initially differ in terms of average endowment, size, and inequality. Because taxation affects the distribution of income both within and between countries, we are able to show how integration impacts it over the entire time horizon. The decision to integrate or not is made by the two national median voters. We establish the net gain for any individual in any country derived from integration and offer a simple decomposition of this gain. It is then proven that even though integration generates aggregate gains for both countries through an endogenous growth mechanism related to size, it may be in the interest of either median voter not to vote for integration given the transformation in the inequality schedule it implies. Surprisingly, even the poorer median voter may vote against integration. Turning to the process of union building, we prove that, once it is decided, integration is irreversible. Countries may initially decide against integration yet be willing to reverse this decision in a subsequent period.     

Status,Risk-Taking and Intertemporal Substitution in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper examines intertemporal risk-taking in a stochastically growing economy with externalities in human capital accumulation where agents have preferences for social status. In order to isolate the effects of status concerns on long-run expected growth, the analysis is embedded in a non-expected utility setting, which disentangles the effects from risk aversion and intertemporal substitution. We examine the interaction between status desire and risk, risk aversion and intertemporal substitution. The externalities generated by the status game are able to correct the allocative distortions from the knowledge spillovers.Acknowledgement The author would like to thank an anonymous referee for his valuable comments.     

经济增长、腐败与收入不平等

本文利用我国1978²012年的时间序列数据,研究了经济增长和腐败对收入不平等的影响。研究发现,腐败扩大了居民收入差距,而经济增长则有利于缩小收入分配差距。因此,通过预防和惩治腐败,减少行政权力对经济和社会资源的垄断,降低行政权力对市场的干预力度,稳步推进政治体制改革,加强对行政权力的民主监督;同时,继续深化市场化改革,加快经济发展,提高居民收入占国民收入的比重,是缩小收入分配差距的关键。     

税收、收入不平等和内生经济增长

企业家(通过金融中介)从家庭借贷来支撑创新。二者在企业家的努力不为外人所见的情形下双方签订信用合同分享创新带来的垄断利润(即蛋糕)。两个有代表性经济人(企业家和家庭)的存在允许人们在内生经济增长模型里研究收入不平等。本文研究发现,企业家分配份额的增加一开始会提升增长速度,但是过了一定值后会拉低增长速度;而该份额的增加一直拉大企业家和工人间的收入差距。所以降低企业家获得的蛋糕的份额的分配改革可缩小收入差距。提高企业家来自创新的收入的税率将降低他们的努力程度,从而降低增长速度,但是该税率的提高有助于降低收入不平等程度。存款收入的税率提高尽管不会改变企业家的努力程度,但是也会降低经济增长速度,而且不会降低收入不平等(如果工人有一定比例的存款)。对于劳动收入(工人工资)的税率增加会加剧工人和企业家间的收入不平等,但对经济增长速度没有影响。     

Distributional Comparisons Using the Gini Inequality Measure

This article is aimed at undergraduate and graduate economics students, as well as public sector economists, who are interested in inequality measurement. It examines the use of the Gini inequality measure to compare income distributions. The implicit distributional value judgements are made explicit, via the use of a particular form of Social Welfare Function. Emphasis is given to the interpretation of changes in inequality.     

Money, Neutrality of Consumption Taxes, and Growth in Intertemporal Optimizing Models

This paper considers the effects of a proportional consumption tax with the same rate over time on the real growth path of a monetary economy. The analysis uses a variety of stylized monetary growth models in which the individual's consumption-saving decision is based on intertemporal utility maximization (e.g. the money-in-utility, transaction-costs, and cash-in-advance models). The neutrality of consumption taxation depends on the assumed role of money in the respective models, even though the tax revenue collected is fully rebated to consumers as lump-sum transfers. The consumption tax is generally superior to inflation tax (i.e. the rate of monetary growth) in terms of steady-state welfare, as long as the labour supply is fixed.
JEL Classification Numbers: E21, E41, E62, H24     

The Intertemporal Equilibrium Modeling of Intra-EMU and Global Trade Imbalances

The intertemporal equilibrium approach to current accounts analyzed the impacts of respective intra-European Monetary Union (intra-EMU) and Asian-U.S. financial integration between 1999 and 2007 on the intra-EMU current account and global trade imbalances. Moreover, Farmer and Ban (2014) find in a three-country, two-region overlapping generations model that financial integration between both the EMU core and periphery and between Asia and the U.S. induce trade surpluses in the EMU core and Asia, while in the EMU periphery and in the U.S., trade balances become negative when the global economy is dynamically inefficient. In this paper, we first show that in a numerically specified Farmer-Ban model, steady-state trade balance to gross domestic product ratios are too low compared to the empirically observed counterparts. We suggest avenues to ameliorate this problem.     

The Great Recession and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Measures of Economic Well-Being

Abstract:

The Great Recession had a tremendous impact on low-income Americans, in particular Black and Latino Americans. The losses in terms of employment and earnings are matched only by the losses in terms of real wealth. In many ways, however, these losses are merely a continuation of trends that have been unfolding for more than two decades. We examine the changes in overall economic well-being and inequality, as well as changes in racial economic inequality during and since the Great Recession. We find that the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being inequality between White and Black households decreased during the Great Recession but since 2010, racial inequality in terms of LIMEW has increased. We find that changes in base income, taxes, and income from non-home wealth during the Great Recession produced declines in overall inequality, while only taxes reduced between-group racial inequality.     

Status Aspirations, Wealth Inequality, and Economic Growth

This paper argues that an increase in the inequality of wealth prompts a stronger quest for status that in turn fosters the accumulation of wealth. It proposes a measure for an individual's want of social status. For a given level of a population's wealth, the corresponding aggregate measure of want of social status is shown to be positively related to the Gini coefficient of wealth inequality. Hence, the Gini coefficient and growth are positively correlated, holding the population's wealth constant.