Testing for overconfidence statistically: A moment inequality approach

We propose a moment inequality approach to test for the presence of overconfidence using data from ranking experiments where subjects rank themselves relative to other experimental participants. Although a ranking experiment is a typical way to collect data for the analysis of overconfidence, recent studies show that the resulting data may apparently indicate overconfidence even if participants are purely rational Bayesian updaters, in which case a set of inequalities hold. We apply state-of-the-art tests of moment inequalities to test such a set of inequalities. We examine the data from a traditional ranking experiment as well as those from more sophisticated designs.     

Women in banking: a study in inequality

As a major area of employment for women, the banking industry provides considerable scope as a case study of equal opportunities in employment. This article aims firstly to analyse the extent and the various aspects of inequality in the English clearing banks and, secondly, to examine the extent of women's participation and influence within the major TUC-affiliated trade union in this field—BIFU.     

Income inequality and the business cycle: A threshold cointegration approach

This paper investigates the impact of various socio-economic variables on various cohorts of the income distribution. We use asymmetric cointegration tests to show that unemployment and immigration shocks have real impacts on income inequality. In addition, using threshold test results we are able to show that positive and negative shocks to the economy do not have symmetric effects nor do the impacts of these shocks impact income quintiles uniformly.     

Healthy lifestyle and safety: An expected net benefit approach to seat belt use

This paper examines the relationship between motorist safety belt use and three lifestyle behaviors affecting health. A healthy lifestyle affects benefits of seat belt use because it indicates a greater value on safety. If individuals are rational in their behavior, we expect consistency across health and safety choices. Using a nationwide survey sample and logit analysis we find lifestyle has expected effects on belt use holding constant individual and vehicle characteristics. Illustrations for two different lifestyles are considered: (1) smoking 1 pack per day, 2 years between dental visits, and no regular exercise and (2) no smoking, 1 year between dental visits and regular exercise. Healtiher lifestyle increases the probability of seat belt use by more than 50% for typical individuals     

Human capital inequality and income inequality: testing for causality

This study investigates the causal relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality in case of Pakistan. The annual time series data ranging from 1973 to 2009 is used for econometric analysis. Johanson co-integration and Granger Causality tests are used to confirm the existence of long run relationship and the causal relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality. The results indicate that there is positive relationship between the two types of inequalities in the long run. The estimates of causality test indicate that income inequality causes the human capital inequality but human capital inequality does not cause income inequality. Policy initiatives to reduce income inequality may empower people economically to avail skill building opportunities and accumulate their human capital through access to educational services.     

Ubiquitous inequality: The home market effect in a multicountry space

We show that spatial inequalities in an economic space of multiple countries in terms of both nominal income and real income are ubiquitous in the sense that they appear when countries are differentiated by population only. A new trade theory model is constructed without any freely traded homogeneous good, so that we can examine the home market effect (HME) and the non-monotonic relation between income inequalities and globalization. Meanwhile, there are three HME definitions for a two-country space in terms of firm share, labor wage, and trade pattern. The first two remain applicable in a multicountry space, and they are shown to be equivalent. However, a natural extension of the third is not equivalent.     

阎焱：风险投资是一种生活方式

“我更喜欢做风险投资人的这种生活方式,我想打球就去打球,但是创业者就不行,他还得在那儿呆着。这可能跟个人性格有关”     

Socioeconomic Conditions and Property Crime:

A comprehensive review of the crime literature indicates varying and often opposing hypotheses of relationships between property crime and socioeconomic conditions such as poverty, business cycle conditions, demographics, criminal justice system actions, and family structure. Employing measures of each of the hypothesized factors, time-series models for robbery, burglary, and vehicle theft are estimated from yearly and national Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data for the period 1959 through 1992 and are used to test these hypotheses' current empirical relevance. The empirical findings selectively confirm the importance of macroeconomic stability and criminal justice system actions in reducing property crime activity. In contrast, decreases in absolute poverty and general income inequality are associated with increased criminal activity; and age demographics and family/community structure apparently have little impact on any of the analyzed property-crime trends, A reduction in inflation apparently decreases property crimes.     

Mis-measurement of inequality: a critical reflection and new insights

This article documents that the Gini index is an insufficient measure of inequality and, according to the traditional logic of interpretation, that it may lead to incorrect deductions. Since, apart from concentration, it cannot grasp other relevant features of inequality like heterogeneity and asymmetry—which, beyond its intensity, allow for considering the direction of inequality too—we suggest using the less known Zanardi index of asymmetry of the Lorenz curve as an appropriate measure of inequality. Our findings are supported with estimates from the Luxembourg Income Study Database.

     

An empirical welfare approach to regional income distributions: Alternative specifications and estimates of income inequality measures

The paper attempts to develop a welfare theoretical approach to the analysis and comparison of regional income differences. Three types of alternative methods are discussed, viz. (a) an a priori method of inserting parameter values in a prespecified welfare function, (b) an ex post method of deriving parameter values of a welfare function on the basis of income statistics and (c) a canonical correlation analysis on the basis of a set of underlying explanatory variables. All these three methods are used to define an income inequality measure appropriate for interregional comparisons. The methods employed are illustrated by means of empirical applications to regional income statistics in the Netherlands.     

An inequality and a lemma revisited

The proofs in two recent papers have been questioned and we now offer some corrections and clarifications. We also draw attention to some earlier work, which in fact implies one of the main results, and note that it is illuminating in another context.     

Lost in Translation: Why Generalized Darwinism is a Misleading Strategy for Studying Socioeconomic Evolution

The article is based on Lewontin's distinction between transformational and variational evolution. Given that transformational evolution is dominant in the social realm while variational evolution reigns in the organic world, the question is if Hodgson and Knudsen's Generalized Darwinism bridges the ontological gap between the two types of evolution. It is argued that the three successive strategies of the authors—deconstruction of Lamarckism, appropriation of the Price equation, redefinition of the replication notion—are all based on controversial semantic innovations. Most importantly, it is shown that Generalized Darwinism, in its effort to address the transformational character of social evolution through the notion of generative replication, is compelled to radically restrict the importance of Darwinian natural selection.     

Correction to: Mis-measurement of inequality: a critical reflection and new insights

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - In the original publication of the article, caption of Figure 3 on the third page of Sect. 4.1 was incorrectly published as.     

Smooth inequality measurement: Approximation theorems

The main purpose of this paper is to prove that smoothness is not a restrictive assumption in inequality measurement as any inequality measure (preorder) can be approximated in a well defined sense by a smooth inequality measure (preorder).     

Models of representation of social mobility and inequality systems. A neural network approach

This paper reports on the results of the application of an innovative technique, i.e. neural network models, to mobility data. Our primary aim is to show that the technique is more flexible than traditional statistical modeling, and that it entails less strong methodological assumptions concerning the phenomenon which they are intended to represent. Two kinds of networks have been applied: heteroassociative networks, used for prevision and class membership recognition; and autoassociative networks, used for simulation tasks. Results obtained from experiments with neural networks on Italian data are highly consistent with the body of knowledge derived from previous classical analysis. The explicative power of neural network models proved to be higher than that of path analysis given their capacity to uncover any kind or relation between variables, whether linear or nonlinear. When compared to log-linear models, they enable the reconstruction of mobility processes within a global frame, controlling all relevant variables at once.     

Changes in urban inequality in Vietnam: 1992–1998

The urban inequality in Vietnam has declined in the 1990s. Using the regression-based decomposition methods [Fields, G.S., 2003. Accounting for income inequality and its change: a new method, with application to the distribution of earnings in the United States. In: Polachek, S.W. (Ed.), Worker Well Being and Public Policy, Research in Labor Economics, vol. 22. Elsevier, New Jersey, pp. 1–38; Yun, M.S., 2006. Earnings inequality in U.S., 1969–99: comparing inequality using earnings equations. Review of Income and Wealth 52, 127–144.], we identify the contributing factors and distinguish between changes of the inequality due to changing returns to characteristics and distribution of these characteristics. We find that the changing returns to regional factors and to physical assets are behind the decline in urban inequality. However, the decline hides adverse changes from human capital and unemployment. Policies to encourage regional labor market integration, improve the quality of and equal access to education are important to make the equal urban distribution sustainable in the new millennium.     

Berry-Esseen-type inequality for a special class of distributions

LetQ be the distribution of the suitably normalized sum of i. i. d.k-dimensional random vectors (k2) and letf be a measurable real valued function of the formf(z ₁,...,z _k )=z ₁+r(z ₂,...,z _k ), where the measurable functionr fulfills certain regularity conditions. A Berry-Esseen-type inequality is derived for the one-dimensional distributionP=Qf ^–1.