Effects of monetary and government spending policy on economic inequality

Using detailed micro-level income and expenditure data, we study the effects of monetary and government spending policy shocks on income and expenditure inequality in the US from 1990 to 2018. We find that expansionary monetary and government spending policy shocks systematically decrease income, disposable income and expenditure inequality. There is evidence of time variation on the effects and monetary policy and transfer payment shocks. Various impulse responses suggest that the impacts of the policy shocks increase during and after the Great Recession. The responses of income and expenditures of households at different percentiles suggest that expansionary monetary and government spending policy have a larger positive impact on households with low income and expenditures relative to those at the top of the distribution. We do not find evidence of the significant impact of Quantitative Easing policies on income inequality, however, expenditure inequality appear to increase due to the policies.     

Predicting within country household food expenditure variation using international cross-section estimates

International cross-section demand systems have not been tested on their ability to accurately predict within country consumption expenditures. This paper reports on such a validation exercise for the case of food budget share predictions across expenditure percentiles within Bangladesh.     

The relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity: a nonparametric analysis

Childhood obesity and food insecurity are major public health concerns in the United States and other developed countries. Research on the relationship between the two has provided mixed results across a variety of data sets and empirical methods. Common throughout this research, however, is the use of parametric frameworks for empirical analyses. This study moves beyond parametric methods by examining the relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity among low-income children with nonparametric regression techniques. We examine data from the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a nationally representative data set from the US. Consistent with recent work, our parametric analyses indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity. In contrast, our nonparametric results indicate that the probability of being obese varies markedly with the level of food insecurity being experienced by the child. Moreover, this relationship differs across relevant subgroups including those defined by gender, race/ethnicity and income. Fully understanding the relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity has significant policy implications.     

行业知识产权风险与企业自主创新投资研究

基于2005-2007年广东省高技术企业调查数据,结合我国的知识产权制度和市场背景,首次从行业层面界定并衡量企业自主创新中的知识产权风险——知识外溢风险与知识产权法律风险,并实证检验了两种风险对企业研究与开发投资的影响。研究发现,知识外溢程度的提高并未降低企业的研究与开发投资,知识外溢的正外部性效应大于风险效应,而知识产权法律风险则不利于企业的研究与开发投资。最后,为企业的自主创新管理和知识产权管理提供有益的建议。     

FOOD NEEDS AND ABSOLUTE POVERTY IN URBAN SOUTH AMERICA

The minimum cost of an adequate diet, following food preferences, is estimated for families in ten South American cities in five countries, allowing for household composition by age and sex. The ratio of actual expenditure on food and beverages to this normative expenditure is then used to rank families in six classes, of which the bottom two correspond to absolute poverty, or to actual expenditure less than the estimated minimum. Three questions can then be explored: which families appear to be poor, on this measure? how do such families allocate their spending toward other items such as housing? and, does this indicator of poverty classify families in much the same way as other proposed measures? The results suggest some under-reporting of food spending in the poorest class, but otherwise the ratio of reported to normative spending gives good results, free from the errors in other parts of the budget and the arbitrariness of indicators which depend on socially-defined rather than physiological “needs.” Poor families tend to be large, with many children; to have many dependents per income recipient; to have male working members other than the head; to suffer unemployment of members other than the head; to have relatively low levels of schooling; and to show high density in housing. Even quite poor households spend appreciable amounts on housing and on education, while not satisfying all food needs; both kinds of spending increase rapidly as food requirements are met. There are no consistent relations between poverty and type of employment or the share of income attributed to the head. The data refer to 1966–69 and are highly comparable; all monetary estimates are in dollars of equal purchasing power.     

The effects of international remittances on expenditure patterns of the left‐behind households in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This article explores the effects of international remittances on the expenditure patterns of households in Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). This article focuses on five countries in SSA, which are some of the destinations that account for the highest receipt of international remittances. We analyze both aggregate and distributional effects of international remittances on expenditure patterns of households. To investigate the distributional effect of international remittances, we adopt the instrumental variable quantile (IV‐quantile) regression framework that allows us to simultaneously address the endogeneity of international remittances and possible heterogeneity in the impact of international remittances on households’ expenditure patterns. We instrument for international remittances by using the economic conditions in migrants’ countries as an instrument for international remittances. Our results show that the receipt of international remittances increases expenditures on food, durables, education, and health. Using the IV‐quantile regression, we find the effects of international remittances on household expenditure on food, durables, education, and health increase across the different expenditure quantiles.     

The Distribution of Household Health Expenditures in Australia*

Out‐of‐pocket health expenditures in Australia are high in international comparisons and have been growing at a faster rate than most other health costs in recent years. This raises concerns about the extent to which out‐of‐pocket costs have constrained access to health services for low income households. Using data from the ABS Household Expenditure Survey 2003–2004, we model the relationships between health expenditure shares and equivalised total expenditure for categories of out‐of‐pocket health expenditures and analyse the extent of protection given by concession cards. To allow for flexibility in the relationship we adopt Yatchew's semi‐parametric estimation technique. This is the first detailed distributional analysis of household health expenditures in Australia. We find mixed evidence for the protection health concession cards give against high out‐of‐pocket health expenditures. Despite higher levels of subsidy, households with concession cards do not have lower out‐of‐pocket expenditures than non‐cardholder households except for the highest expenditure quintile. Cards provide most protection for GP out‐of‐pocket expenditures.     

Participatory budgeting and the pattern of local government spending: Evidence from South Korea

We use a panel of Korean municipalities to examine the impact of participatory budgeting on local government expenditures. We find that participatory budgeting systematically alters the pattern of local spending. Municipalities using participatory budgeting reallocate resources toward more immediate and visible expenditures and away from long-term development expenditure. We also find evidence that participatory budgeting affects the municipal budget by a greater amount than the expenditures directly allocated through participatory budgeting. Our findings indicate that participatory budgeting leads to the reallocation of local public spending by increasing information flows between policymakers and service users.     

The Risks and Dynamics of Health Care Expenditures in Urban China： An Illustration in Kunshan City

This paper examines the individual financial risk of health care expenditures over time in urban China, .using longitudinal health expenditure data from 2005 to 2007 in Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province, China. We find that the stochastic process of log total health care expenditures is well represented by the sum of an AR（3） process and white noise process. Simulating this model, we find that the urban health insurance system protects enrollees from the risk of catastrophic health care expenditures by bearing the majority of the health care expenditures. However, out-of-pocket health care expenditures represents a considerable risk to an individual＇s financial status.     

Food away from home expenditures and obesity among older Europeans: are there gender differences?

Older people (i.e., at least 50?years of age) are becoming one of the most important demographic groups in the world. We explore the effect of food away from home expenditures on obesity among the older population in Europe using instrumental variable methods. Several statistical tests were conducted to assess endogeneity of selected variables, the exogeneity, relevance, and validity of instruments used. Our results generally suggest that food-away-from-home expenditure has no statistically significant effect on body mass index (BMI) of older males but is negatively related to BMI of older females.     

THE DISTRIBUTIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND TAXATION IN THE U.S., 1989 AND 2000

We assess the effects of government expenditures and taxation on household economic well-being in the United States in 1989 and 2000. Net government expenditure is estimated as the difference between government expenditures incurred on behalf of the household sector—transfers and public consumption—and the taxes paid by that sector. We incorporate the estimates of net government expenditures into a wealth-adjusted measure of income. We find that overall inequality in our income measure is considerably reduced by net government expenditures. Results from decomposition analysis show that the inequality-reducing effect of net government expenditures owed more to expenditures than to taxes.     

The Impact of the German Child Benefit on Household Expenditures and Consumption

The German Child Benefit (‘Kindergeld’) is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. The benefit does not depend on household income or other household characteristics. I use exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households in the German Socio‐Economic Panel to estimate the impact of a given change in the child benefit on food expenditures of households, the probability of owning a home, rent per square meter, measures of the size of the home, as well as parents’ smoking behavior and parents’ alcohol consumption. Households primarily increase per capita food expenditures in response to increases in child benefit, and they also improve housing conditions. The effect of child benefit on per capita food expenditures is larger for low‐income households compared to high‐income households. I do not find a significant effect of child benefit on parents’ smoking or drinking.     

The impacts of social pension on rural household expenditure: evidence from China

In 2009, China began to implement a new social pension scheme in rural areas. We examine the impacts of this social pension on two main components of rural household expenditure, consumption and agricultural production investment. Our findings show that on average, rural households increase consumption by 1–3% and agricultural investment by as high as 6–9% in pilot counties. Further estimations reveal that the pension mainly affects the households with old-aged members and the poorer families, and that the saving rate hasn’t been changed by the pension, which support more the contingent income than the life-cycle hypothesis. We also find that among various types of expenditures, the most dramatic increases have occurred in food consumption and operational inputs on agricultural production.     

Does environmental quality influence health expenditures? Empirical evidence from a panel of selected OECD countries

In this paper we examine the role of environmental quality in determining per capita health expenditures. We take a panel cointegration approach in order to explore the possibility of estimating both short-run and long-run impacts of environmental quality. Our empirical analysis is based on eight OECD countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK for the period 1980-1999. We find that per capita health expenditure, per capita income, carbon monoxide emissions, sulphur oxide emissions and nitrogen oxide emissions are panel cointegrated. While short-run elasticities reveal that income and carbon monoxide emissions exert a statistically significant positive effect on health expenditures, in the long-run in addition to income and carbon monoxide, we find that sulphur oxide emissions have a statistically significant positive impact on health expenditures.     

The Impact of Climate Change on Regional Government Expenditures: Evidence from Russia

This paper explores an almost untouched topic in the fast-growing climate econometrics literature—the implications of climate change for government expenditures. Using a rich sub-national dataset for Russia covering 1995–2009, we estimate the impacts of changes in climatic conditions through short-term variation and medium-term changes in average regional temperatures and precipitation. We show a strong and robust negative (but non-linear) relation between regional budget expenditures and population-weighted temperature. The results indicate that an increase in temperature results in a decrease in public expenditures and that the magnitude of this effect diminishes the warmer the region. Further, our results suggest that the benefits from warming accumulate and that adaptation measures could help leverage those benefits. The estimated decreases in regional government expenditure are, however, quite small. In mild warming scenarios, according to our estimates Russia saves roughly USD 3–4 billion in regional government expenditures between 2000 and the 2020s without undertaking adaptation measures, depending on the scenario. It should be noted that our results are estimated for a scenario of mild temperature increase (1–2 \(^{\circ }\)C). Larger temperature increases are likely to have dramatic consequences e.g. from loss of permafrost and methane release that are impossible to predict with available historical data.     

国际食物消费启示与中国食物 缺口分析：基于历史数据

通过梳理美国、欧盟、日本、韩国和中国台湾的食物消费统计资料，本文发现食物消费存在四大特点，分别是在经济水平发达之前食品消费严重依赖本国（地区）农业自然资源禀赋、食物消费饱和状态广泛存在、班尼特法则和在外饮食常态化。另外，当人均GDP进入15 000美元～20 000美元区间后，食物消费趋于稳定或缓慢增长，粮食和肉类人均消费（包含水产品）均趋近于“双百”状态：口粮消费约100千克，肉类和水产品加总约100千克。通过考察中国内地的食物消费现状，本文发现2020年后中国内地的食物消费将趋于稳定或进入缓慢增长阶段，在肉类、植物油和食糖消费上还存在较大缺口。     

发展中国家粮食安全与贫困——基于“交换权利映射”的分析

发展中国家贫困的特征表现为生产力和人均收入水平低,这两点导致了发展中国家个人的粮食获取能力受到制约。市场交易、自行生产和粮食援助是个体获取粮食的三种渠道。贫困通过对这些因素的影响最终导致了对粮食安全的威胁。"交换权利映射"通过个体拥有的资源与交换权利集合的映射关系说明了在发展中国家因为贫困而导致的个体拥有的资源匮乏而使其处在粮食不安全集合中。     

贫困缺粮地区的粮食消费和食品安全

本文以实证分析方法对我国农村地区,特别是贫困缺粮地区的农民食品消费及其影响因素进行研究,认为影响我国贫困农村地区农民粮食和食品安全保障的最主要因素是农民的收入水平;传统的扩大当地粮食种植比重、提高自给自足水平的政策选择不仅导致资源配置低效,而且不利于食品安全水平的提高。研究提出,更有效地保障这部分弱势人群食品安全的政策选择是增加农民收入、完善和健全农产品,特别是粮食市场的流通机制。     

Government response to increased demand for public services: The cyclicality of government health expenditures in the OECD

The more that health care expenditures are financed by general taxation, the greater the discretion governments are likely to exercise when timing increases in health care expenditures. Vote-maximising governments time increases in health care expenditures to occur in economic upturns, when voters are not as aware of the required increase in taxation. In recessions, they have an incentive to sustain expenditures on health care by diverting expenditures from other public expenditure programmes that voters perceive as low priority. In this way, government pursuit of a political agenda is likely to exert a systematic influence on the cyclicality of government expenditure. Predictions are tested with reference to the cyclicality of government health expenditures, for a sample of OECD countries from 2000 to 2012.     

Cereal production,undernourishment, and food insecurity in South Asia

South Asia remains one of the major strongholds of hunger in the world, despite the fact that, following the Green Revolution, cereal production in the countries of this region tripled during the second half of the 20th century. This study examines the role played by this increase in cereal production in improving the region’s nutrition and food security situation. We study the association between the different aspects of food security and cereal production in South Asia that have prevailed over the past 25 years. We find a beneficial role of the production and yield of cereals in lowering the extent of undernourishment. A 1% increase in cereal production and yield is associated with up to 0.84% decrease in the prevalence of undernourishment. The impact is significant over a period of 3 years. The positive effect is particularly evident in the case of rice and maize production. An improvement is seen in the aspects of availability, stability, and utilization of food security but not in the aspect of access. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and techniques. The results explain, in part, the means by which South Asian nations have managed to stall relative increases in extreme hunger and food insecurity.