Wealth,Capital and the Theory of Distribution: Some Implications for Piketty’s Analysis

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) has been spectacularly successful. One reason for this is that while it often challenges received views and supports a non-apologetic interpretation of capitalism, at the same time it relies on mainstream economics. This theoretical framework, however, is not always conducive to consistency and interpretative accuracy. This paper points out some of the book’s analytical weaknesses and shows that some empirical evidence, a clearer distinction between wealth and capital, and a different theoretical perspective, could lead to questioning some of the book’s claims. In particular, it argues that the increase in the wealth-to-output ratio (but not the capital-to-output ratio) cannot explain the observed changes in income shares. It also contends that non-mainstream perspectives on income distribution and growth suggest that changes in income distribution are due more to policy and power relations than to the factors Piketty identifies.     

最低工资对中国工人收入及分配的影响*——基于CHNS数据的经验研究

本文运用微观调查数据,研究最低工资政策对工人收入及分配结构的影响。首先分析最低工资对工人收入水平的整体影响,然后应用倍差法和比例法分析最低工资政策对不同类型工人收入增长率的影响,以考察最低工资的收入分配效应。分析结果显示,总体而言最低工资对工人收入不具有显著影响,仅仅对部分低收入群体如女性群体有一定正面影响;对于收入水平位于上一期最低工资150%～250%区间内的工人收入,最低工资具有显著负向影响。这些显示该政策可能会对收入分配结构产生一定轻微影响。     

Perpetual growth,the labor share,and robots

ABSTRACT

The recent literature on the economic effects of machine learning, robotization and artificial intelligence suggests that there may be an upcoming wave of substitution of human labor by machines. We argue that these new technologies may lead to so-called perpetual growth, i.e. growth of per capita income with a non-progressing state of technology. We specify an exact parameter threshold beyond which perpetual growth emerges, and argue that ongoing technological change may bring the threshold in reach. We also show that in a state of perpetual growth, factor-eliminating technological progress reduces the role of labor in the production process and that this leads to a rising wage rate but ever-declining share of wage income. We present simulation experiments on several policy options to combat this inequality, including a universal basic income as well as an option in which workers become owners of ‘robots’.     

Inflation and the Income Share of the Rich: Evidence for 14 OECD Countries

This paper examines the distributional implications of inflation on top income shares in 14 advanced economies using data over the period 1920–2016. We use local projections to analyze how top income shares respond to an inflation shock, and panel regressions in which all variables are defined as 5-year averages to examine the impact of inflation on the position of the top-one-percent in the long run. Our findings suggest that inflation reduces the share of national income held by the top 1 percent. Furthermore, we find that inflation shocks and long-run inflation have similar effects on top income shares.     

经济增长、收入分配对农村贫困变动的影响

文章利用了基于Lorenz曲线进行贫困测度及其分解的方法,实证研究了1985～2003年中国农村的贫困变动,以及经济增长和收入分配对贫困变动的影响.结果表明,经济增长使农村居民收入增加,大幅度减少了贫困,但农村居民的收入差距逐渐拉大,收入不平等加剧部分地抵消了经济增长的减贫成效.     

Effective factor endowments, trade openness and income distribution in China

This paper studies the empirical relationship among factor endowment, trade openness and individual income distribution. Using panel data, we show that factor endowment characters, to some extent, explains income gap in China. First, land and Capital intensive provinces have a more equal income distribution while human capital and labor-intensive provinces have a less equal income distribution. Second, Trade openness has a significant effect on China’s income distribution; the interaction between a special endowment and openness has different effect on income distribution; we also show that FDI, economy development, unemployment and reform have considerable negative effect on income distribution. Our results are robust to various kinds of test.     

河北省行业收入差距成因及对策研究

河北省行业职工收入低、行业间收入差距大。从初次分配比例、行业对国家的贡献、行业对经济发展的贡献、行业劳动生产率四个方面对行业收入进行分析可以看出,行业垄断和劳动生产率是影响行业收入的主要原因。因此,我们应转变观念,正确认识增加居民收入对经济增长的促进作用,加大消费带动行业发展;建立稳定的工资调整机制,使居民收入的增长和经济增长相协调;建立完善的收入分配调节机制,强化政府的分配调节职能;构建适应社会主义市场经济要求的人力资本定价机制,打造初次分配的公平基础。     

缩小收入差距的财政思考

在当前收入分配不公急剧扩大、甚至可能产生某种不稳定因素的情况下,利用财政政策缓解收入分配不公的现状势在必行。在当前情况下,通过财政政策对初次分配形成的收入差距作适度合理的调整才是较为现实的手段之一。     

On the Limitations of Some Current Usages of the Gini Index

This note constructs a simple two class example in which the Gini index is held constant while the size of the rich and poor populations change, in order to illustrate how very different societies can have the same Gini index and produce very similar estimates of standard inequality averse Social Welfare Functions. The rich/poor income ratio can vary by a factor of over 12, and the income share of the top one per cent can vary by a factor of over 16, with exactly the same Gini index. Focussing solely on the Gini index can thus obscure perceptions—e.g. of important market income trends or large changes in the redistributive impact of the tax and transfer system. Hence, analysts should supplement the use of an aggregate summary index of inequality with direct examination of the segments of the income distribution which they think are of greatest importance.     

基于高收入群体的税收政策反思

中国的某些税收政策没有起到调节收入分配、缩小收入差距的作用,对形成高收入群体的收入来源和财产,往往采取轻税政策,广大低收入者由于在收入、财产等方面的匮乏使其无法享受到税收优惠的好处。中国应改变目前的税收政策取向,加大对高收入群体的征税力度,发挥税收政策调节功能,实现收入分配公平。     

社会资本对收入水平及差异的影响是扩大还是减少*——来自12省份城市居民的样本

本文基于CHIP（中国家庭收入调查）（2002年）数据,实证研究了我国城市居民的社会资本对其收入水平和差异的影响。在其他条件相同的情况下,居民收入会随着自身社会资本的改善而提高。社会资本对收入差距的影响可以分解为两种不同的机制：（1）即使个体的社会资本相同,由于社会资本的收入回报率的异质性,社会资本在不同的收入群体中会产生扩大收入差距的影响;（2）给定社会资本的收入回报率相同,个体社会资本量的异质性也会扩大收入差距。笔者用分位数回归方法分析了社会资本的收入回报率在不同收入水平上的分布,从而验证了第一类机制。给定社会资本的收入回报率相同,使用夏普利值分解的方法发现,个体社会资本量的异质性会加剧收入差距的扩大,但是这一贡献并没有区域、行业特征等因素显著。随后的实证分析检验了社会资本对收入确实有提高作用,同时也分析出社会资本可能会缩小收入差距。这加深了我们对于社会资本在经济发展中微观机制的理解,并对制定消除收入差距的政策有指导意义。     

Income Mobility and Income Inequality in Rural China

The economic literature has argued for a long time that income mobility could attenuate the degree of cross-sectional inequality by offering people opportunities to improve their socio-economic position. Using the longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1989 to 2011, we measure income mobility as the degree to which longer-term incomes are distributed more or less equally than yearly income. Five main results are emphasized. First, there is strong income mobility in rural China that partly offsets yearly income inequality. Second, income mobility has decreased since the 2000s, indicating that income distribution is becoming more rigid. Third, mobility is mainly associated with transitory income fluctuations, particularly in the two tails of the distribution. Fourth, income mobility has an equalizing effect on income distribution. Fifth, we show that non-agricultural income mobility has substantially increased over the period and that its equalizing nature has also recently increased. While the development of the non-agriculture sector in rural China was a crucial factor in explaining the increase in rural inequality until the mid-2000s, we suggest that the large-scale generalisation of such non-agricultural opportunities partly accounts for the decline in rural inequality observed since the mid-2000s.     

Inequality in Pre-Income Survey Times: A Methodological Proposal

We propose different alternatives of inequality estimation for economies with a big agricultural sector where land is a decisive factor in income generation and where we do not have enough information about personal earnings. To this end, we use the Uruguayan case to test our methodology. We propose six analytical exercises where Gini indexes are calculated, and as reference we choose the estimation that better adjusts to some theoretical and empirical conditions. Finally, we check the historical accuracy of the series by looking at income distribution explicative variables and the shape of the Inequality possibility frontier. Our results are consistent with the economic and social events of the period (1870–1912) and with previous estimates which reveal worsening trends in income distribution. However, our annual data allow capturing the dynamics of the process where breaks in the series are observed and improvements and declines alternate in the evolution of income distribution.     

Factor Components of Inequality: A Cross‐Country Study

This paper uses data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine some of the forces that have driven changes in household income inequality over the last three decades of the twentieth century. We decompose inequality for six countries (Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.) into the three sources of market income (earnings, property income, and income from self‐employment) and taxes and transfers. Our findings indicate that although changes in the distribution of earnings are an important force behind recent trends, they are not the only one. Greater earnings dispersion has in some cases been accompanied by a reduction in the share of earnings which dampened its impact on overall household income inequality. In some countries the contribution of self‐employment income to inequality has been on the rise, while in others, increases in inequality in capital income account for a substantial fraction of the observed distributional changes.     

中国古代收入分配思想中的市场意识--兼论经济意识与制度演进的关系

尽管处在前市场的经济体制中,中国古代提出或主张由市场决定收入分配的仍不乏其人,他们还从实际的生活体验中感悟到:要使由市场决定的收入分配真正实现,确定和稳固的产权制度必不可少。中国古代收入分配思想中已经具有明显的市场意识,却没有对实际政策发生积极的影响,这表明具有科学内涵或较强解释力的经济思想要转化为现实的制度安排,取决于制度变迁的多重复杂因素。     

On the determinants of inequality in Bosnia and Herzegovina

We provide empirical evidence on the determinants of income inequality in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the civil war. To do this, we use a an ordered probit approach and take advantage of the first post‐war household survey for the country which sheds some light on the influence of regional differences as well as household characteristics on income quintile determination. With respect to the former, we find large income differences between the two entities in the country, the Federation and Republika Srpska. Such income differences are also noticeable inside entities. On the latter, there are some signs that education, experience, and employment, among others, may help reduce the probability of income decline. Our results are robust to changes of specification as shown by applying a formal sensitivity analysis. JEL classification: O15, O10, I30.     

Income Underreporting and Tax Evasion in Italy: Estimates and Distributional Effects

The paper estimates the extent of evasion of personal income tax (PIT) in Italy by integrating two methods that the literature has previously applied separately. The consumption-based method introduced by Pissarides and Weber (1989) is used to estimate misreporting of income in micro data collected in the household IT-SILC survey. We adopt an econometric specification close in spirit to that of Feldman and Slemrod (2007), which allows us to estimate income misreporting at different rates for different income sources. The misreporting estimates are then used in the discrepancy method to correct the incomes compared with administrative registered data. The comparison provides new estimates of evasion of personal income tax by type of income, region and income class. The estimates are used to improve microsimulation analyses of the distributional impact of tax evasion.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGES AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME BY SIZE: THE CASE OF INDIA

The interrelation between changes in the economic structure, i.e., industrial distribution of income and labor force, and the size distribution of income is studied in this paper in a case study of India (1951–1960).
The change in the size distribution of income is the sum of changes due to (1) inter-sectoral factors and (2) intra-sectoral factors. The need for this distinction is emphasized by the result obtained for India, that 85% of the changes in the size distribution may be assigned to inter-sectoral factors, and only 15% to intra-sectoral factors. Since the inter-sectoral factors are significantly influenced by changes in the industrial distribution of income and labor force, our result points out a relation between economic growth and the size distribution which quite often is overlooked in studies of the size distribution.
The results obtained in this paper support several cross-section results of Professor Kuznets. In particular some of these are: (a) inter-sectoral inequality in the economic structure widened with economic growth, (b) the inequality in the size distribution of India widened, (c) the level of inequality in India is higher than in any of the eight developed countries considered.     

Changes in the Income Distribution of the Dutch Elderly between 1989 and 2020: a Dynamic Microsimulation

This paper analyzes the income distribution of the Dutch elderly using a microsimulation model. Microsimulation models allow for detailed estimates of the income distribution. Our model deviates from traditional models by explicitly considering the persistency and heteroskedasticity of real income shocks. In this way, modeling all underlying processes influencing household income becomes less necessary, which can improve the trade‐off between refinement and tractability of microsimulation models. We show the results of three model specifications with different levels of refinement. The results are in line and indicate that between 2008 and 2020, the highest predicted annual growth among the elderly is for median‐income households (about 1.2 percent). High‐income households have a somewhat lower predicted growth (about 1.0 percent) and low‐income households only have a predicted annual growth of 0.5 percent. Inequality therefore seems to increase in the lower part of the distribution, while it will probably decline in the upper part of the distribution.     

代际流动约束下生育率与收入不平等关系的国际检验

收入不平等问题和人口生育率过低问题是当下中国面临的两大难题,但目前理论界关于人口因素与收入不平等关系的研究,很少从生育率视角来考察以及考虑代际收入流动在其中的作用.文章从理论与经验两个方面来考察生育率对收入不平等的影响,理论模型表明:在关于代际收入流动的假设下,一个经济体中生育率的提高会使穷人比重提高,进而拉大收入不平等.进一步地,文章利用1970-2011年76个国家(地区)面板数据的经验研究发现:(1)总和生育率的提高会拉大收入不平等,如果每个妇女平均多生育一个孩子,将会使基尼系数增加0.025;(2)以出生率作为总和生育率替代指标的实证结果与基准结果基本一致,这说明不同生育率测算指标高度相关且可相互替代;(3)对于代际收入流动弹性越高、收入水平越低或生育率越高的国家(地区),其生育率提高对收入不平等的拉大作用越大.文章关于生育率对收入不平等影响的作用机制和异质性特征的考察,对于我国如何在实施"全面二孩"政策下寻求应对严峻的收入分配问题之策提供了国际经验和启示.