Trade balance and income in historical perspective

This paper develops a dynamic analysis of the trade balance to investigate the roles of supply and demand shocks. It also introduces global shocks in the analysis to take into account the comovement of income across countries. The results, based on the long-run historical data and a structural VAR analysis, show that, in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Sweden, domestic and global supply shocks, while dominant causes in long-term and cyclical changes in output, are unimportant for the trade balance. The trade balance is explained mostly by shocks that cause transitory changes in income. Transitory income shocks cause income and the trade balance to move in opposite directions in all countries except Sweden. The countercyclical behavior of the trade balance seems to be a robust feature in the U.K. and Canada but not in the smaller economies of Australia and Sweden.This research was supported by a summer research grant from the Carol Martin Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. The grant was made possible by a donation of funds to the College by Ashland Inc. I appreciate the Editor, two anonymous referees, Dick Gift and Mark Toma for their helpful suggestions. All remaining errors are mine.     

A new approach to the decomposition of the Gini income inequality ratio

The purpose of this research is to introduce a new approach to the decomposition of the Gini ratio into three components, supporting them with economic and statistical rigorous interpretations. The three components are: (i) the Gini inequalitywithin subpopulations; (ii) thenet contribution of the extended Gini inequalitybetween subpopulations; and (iii) the contribution of theintensity of transvariation between subpopulations. These components are weighted by the product of the population shares times the income shares of the corresponding subpopulations where the weights add to one.The decomposition introduced in this research is applied to the 1990 U.S. family income distribution. The population of families is disaggregated by types into the following subpopulations: (a) married-couple families; (b) male householder, no wife present; and (c) female householder, no husband present.     

Individual labour income,stock prices and whom it may concern

In this paper, a panel model which describes the relationship between individual labour income and stock prices in Germany is estimated. The specification allows the individuals to cluster concerning the model parameters that describe first the individual labour income dynamics and second the relationship between the individual labour income and financial markets. Methodically, a Bayesian model-based non-Gaussian panel data approach, proposed by Juarez and Steel (2010a), is used. A group of individuals with a high cluster assignment probability is found. The characteristics of this group, whose individuals share the same autoregressive dynamics and a common, relatively high dependence on financial markets, are investigated further. It can be shown that this group has a statistically significantly different partition of the major occupational groups. This leads to implications for various branches of the literature, such as the pricing of human capital contracts, the hedging of individual income risk, portfolio optimization or asset pricing.     

市场潜能与地区收入差距——基于空间视角

基于空间经济学理论,构建两类空间面板模型,理论分析并实证检验市场潜能对地区间整体及地区内城乡结构性收入差距的影响.结果表明:市场潜能对地区间整体收入水平的提高具有显著促进作用,市场潜能较高的地区将获得更强的经济发展动力,从而该地区居民收入水平也就更高;收入水平呈现空间集聚特征,不同地区之间市场潜能对收入增长的影响存在显著异质性,且这一差距在较大程度上解释了中国不同地区之间尤其是东西部之间的收入差距;市场潜能与城乡结构性收入差距之间表现出先缩小后扩大的U型影响,其拐点在7.02处,对于尚未超过该拐点的地区而言提高市场潜能仍然是改善地区内城乡结构性收入差距的重要手段.     

The last generalists

Abstract

The general trend of research specialisation in economics has contributed to the marginalisation of the history of economic thought. However, it has also led to a state of fragmentation in the profession and thereby increased the costs of neglecting the history of economic thought. This paper argues that historians of thought can help to counteract fragmentation because they are special generalists that fulfil multiple functions, for example, in the education of economists, the detection of blind spots in modern theories and the identification of routes for innovation by backtracking.     

Positional income concerns and personality: evidence from Germany

Positional income concerns (PIC) strongly influence economic behaviour and life outcomes. However, very little is known about the underlying heterogeneity regarding their importance across individuals on the one hand and across different reference groups on the other. Our analysis builds on representative survey data reporting PIC vis-à-vis seven reference groups, allowing us to identify marked heterogeneity both between and within subjects. We present evidence about who (in terms of personality) compares to whom (in terms of reference group).     

Status-seeking behavior,the evolution of income inequality,and growth

Using an overlapping generations model, this paper investigates the implications of status-seeking behavior, induced by preferences for relative income, for the evolution of income inequality. When average income rises, an individual’s marginal utility of their own income may increase (keeping up with the Joneses, or KUJ), or decrease (running away from the Joneses, or RAJ). It is shown that income inequality is shrinking over time in the KUJ economy, whereas it is expanding in the RAJ economy. We also explore the implications for long-run growth and inequality, in the existence of both KUJ and RAJ agents. I am truly grateful to Koichi Futagami for his encouragement and guidance in writing this paper. I have benefitted from comments by an anonymous referee, Been-Lon Chen, Giacomo Corneo, Akiomi Kitagawa, Kazuo Mino, Kazuhiro Yuki, and seminar participants at Osaka University, the 2006 Japanese Economic Association Autumn Meeting at Osaka City University, the Far Eastern Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at Taipei, SER Conference 2007 at Singapore, and the European Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at Budapest. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. The financial support from JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists is greatly acknowledged.     

Technometrics: Origins, historical evolution and new directions

This paper analyses the origins and historical evolution of technometrics, a discipline that measures and evaluates technological change with important policy implications. Technometric approaches, initiated in the 1950s, with the pioneering researches carried out by the scholars of The RAND Corporation staff. In the second half of the twentieth century, technometrics becomes a distinct field of investigation, characterised by the coming together of several disciplines, such as econometrics, engineering and applied mathematics, mathematical and multivariate statistics, and so on. This survey presents the main techniques of technometrics, developed over the course of time, showing their potential and methodological difficulties. Some concluding remarks and lessons learned complete the research.     

奠基时期中国经济思想史研究的成就与地位

文章将1897-1949年间的中国经济思想史研究作为该学科的奠基时期。鉴于奠基时期的学术研究对后续研究的重要影响,以及学术界对该阶段研究的不足和对其评价肯定得不够充分,文章从学术史研究的角度出发,围绕研究成果、学术争鸣、学术价值以及研究特点等方面系统地阐述了奠基时期中国经济思想史研究的主要贡献与历史地位,并对经济思想史学科的发展提出了一些针对性的建议。     

对缩小收入差距问题的远近期思考

国际上通常使用基尼系数作为衡量一个国家或地区收入差距的重要标志。我国居民收入基尼系数不仅高于国际通行标准，也高于发达国家。收入差距扩大已经成为影响消费规模扩大、社会安定的重要因素之一。一般认为，经济发展会进一步扩大收入差距。治理并缩小收入差距应标本兼治：短期内可以依靠收入转移、完善社会保障系统等手段；从长期看，深化经济体制改革、促进经济健康稳定发展才是缩小乃至逐步消除收入差距的根本途径。     

The conspicuous absence of examination questions concerning the Great Irish Famine: political economy as science and ideology *

To advance our general understanding about the development of nine-teenth-century Irish political economy in the wake of the Great Irish Famine (1846–51), this article analyses the Famine's impact on a previously unstudied, yet uniquely authoritative, element of the displine: the questions given to candidates for the Whately Professorship of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin from 1832 to 1882. This article concludes, contrary to previous arguments, that the Famine did not fundamentaly influence the discipline's development, and relates this conclusion to debates over whether and how political economy functioned as an ideology in shaping policy responses to the Famine.     

The Dichotomized State

As the radical institutionalist literature attests, in spite of methodological differences Marx and Veblen draw strikingly similar conclusions regarding production, conflict, and alienation in modern life. Here we attempt to contribute to this viewpoint by establishing that similarity in conclusion stems from similarity in approach. After reviewing the existing literature on a Marx-Veblen methodological reconciliation, we briefly review Marx's method, making the mediated starting point the focus of discussion. From this vantage point, we then examine Veblen's own approach to analysis in The Theory of Business Enterprise and the conclusions that emerge as they resemble those of Marx. We maintain that in taking a kindred approach Veblen is able to arrive at an understanding of capitalism in accordance with, and complementary to, Marx's rendering of the inverted nature of economic life in modernity.     

多维度视角下贫困问题的再探析

在多维度视角下,从收入分配、地理环境、气候变化和教育制度四个方面详细分析贫困产生的原因,并提出相应减少贫困的措施,建议政策制定者在我国当前经济迅速发展和社会财富较快增长时期,采取措施缩小贫富悬殊和减少贫困,实现社会稳定发展。     

Income comparison and happiness: The role of fair income distribution

Relative income gap is one of the most popular approaches for explaining the income–happiness relationship. We argue in this article that when people compare their incomes, they care about distributional fairness more than relative income disparity. It is difficult for us to explain China's income–happiness paradox if we simply compare the income gap and do not explore the income‐generation process leading to income inequality. We therefore employ an approach based on a responsibility‐sensitive theory of justice that decomposes individual income into fair and unfair components. As a proxy for distributional unfairness, unfair income is considered the main source of unhappiness. Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project survey, we find strong support for the negative relationship between income unfairness and happiness. We also find a significantly positive relationship between the relative income gap and income unfairness, which leads us to consider the income comparison hypothesis as the explanation for the income–happiness paradox in a new light. Sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of our results.     

The Dilemmas of Technology: A Review Article

During the 1990s, all of the European transition economies (TE) experienced a major recession and suffered from the explosion of income inequality. However, distribution of income between labor and capital differed greatly from one group of post-communist countries to another. The paper discusses and analyzes linkages between models of capitalism that emerged in former communist countries in the 1990s and the outcome of capitalist transition for labor in terms of income distribution and inequality. It is based on the estimates of the Marxian rate of exploitation and other indicators of labor income performance during the reform period.     

收藏的效用研究:一个经济学分析

虽然中国的收藏品市场还处在发展初期,但是,收藏投资的回报率仍然相当可观.不仅如此,收藏活动还能够给人们带来心理上的满足和精神上的享受,满足人们深层次的心理需要和高层次的精神需要.收藏活动可以给人们带来经济收益和精神收益,这两种收益都可以直接或间接地带来效用的满足,从而实现收藏者的效用最大化.这正是收藏投资迥异于证券投资和房地产投资的重要特点,同时也是人们热衷于收藏活动的重要原因.     

中国居民消费与资产收益:基于收入群体的分析

The equity premium puzzle is found during the test of the Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM) with aggregate consumption data. Because of income disparity, many consumers lack financial assets to intertemporally allocate their consumptions under income constraints. Thus, it is likely to lead to a specification error by employing aggregate consumption data to test the CCAPM. This paper examines the impacts of the economically constrained (low-income) consumers and unconstrained (high-income) consumers on the CCAPM using urban consumption expenditures in China delineated by consumer income, and tests the income constraint hypothesis. The empirical results show that the CCAPM is not more consistent with the consumption pattern of the higher-income consumers. Including the income constraint into the analyses of the consumption and asset returns does not unravel the equity premium puzzle.      

Measurement of redistributive effect of tax rates from a longitudinal perspective: an application of the fixed taxable income approach

The primary objective of this article is to explore how the redistributive effects of tax rate change when using the fixed taxable income approach – where tax rates for each year in a period are applied to taxable income for a base year to calculate rate effects – instead of using an existing procedure to compute the rate effects. Standard rate effects are found to differ considerably from those calculated using the fixed taxable income approach in terms of both level and longitudinal trend.     

Pod learning: Student groups create podcasts to achieve economics learning goals

In this article, the authors examine two ways that they use music (i.e., popular song lyrics) as an active learning technique in an undergraduate history of economic thought course. First, they use music to help students grasp the ideas of the great thinkers in economics and see their relevance today. Second, because they require students to read original texts and write thesis-driven essays, they use music to teach essential skills related to such assignments. While the article focuses on how they use music as a pedagogical device to teach the history of economic thought, the use of music to teach essential skills could be applied to any economics course in which students engage in higher-level reading and writing.     

Economic sociology: a historical perspective

In this paper we briefly recall what is meant by economic sociology, basing our definition principally on the works of R. Swedberg and M. Cranovetter. We then focus on the questions and problematics which are more particularly relevant to the history of economic and sociological thought in such a way as to make explicit the kind of past in relation to which economic sociology is most pertinent. We shall thus be induced to correct certain explanations and to propose a slightly different perspective on the origin of economic sociology. This historical work enables us to formulate a definition of economic sociology based on two key concepts - economic institution and economic action - and allows us to articulate what economic sociology actually is, rather than merely describing what it is not. Finally, we show that these propositions are not without interest in relation to the present-day economic sociology that tends to go by the name - made fasionable by Granovetter and Swedberg - of ‘New Economic Sociology.’