The Perception of Inequality of Opportunity in Europe

Does the way in which scholars measure inequality of opportunity correspond to how people perceive it? What other factors influence individual perception of this phenomenon? To answer these questions, we must first clarify how scholars define and measure inequality of opportunity. We discuss the possible mechanisms linking objective measures to subjective perception of the phenomenon, then propose a measure of perceived inequality of opportunity, and finally test our hypothesis by merging data from two sources: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2011) and the International Social Survey Programme (2009). We suggest that the prevailing perception of the degree of unequal opportunity in a large sample of respondents is only weakly correlated with its objective measure. We estimate a multilevel model considering both individual‐ and country‐level controls to explain individual perception of unequal opportunity. Our estimates suggest that the two most adopted measures of inequality of opportunity have no clear role in explaining its perception. Conversely, other country‐level variables and personal experiences of intergenerational social mobility are important determinants of how inequality of opportunity is perceived.     

机会不均等:收入分配失衡的经济学解析

改革开放以来,我国经济社会发展取得了巨大的成就,然而,伴随着经济增长,收入差距的不断扩大,分配不公现象日益严峻.本文分析了收入分配差距存在的合理性,审视了当前我国收入分配的状况及特征,在此基础上提出机会不均等是收入差距产生的根本原因,必须深化收入分配制度改革,才能从根本上解决收入分配不公的问题.     

Wage Inequality and Wage Mobility in Europe

Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, this paper investigates wage inequality and wage mobility in Europe. Decomposing inequality into within‐ and between‐group inequality, we analyze to what extent wage inequality and mobility can be explained by observable characteristics. Furthermore, we investigate which individual and household characteristics determine transitions within the wage distribution. We find that overall, mobility reduces wage inequality. While a large part of wage inequality is due to unobservable characteristics, the equalizing effect of mobility mainly occurs within groups. Furthermore, both personal and household characteristics play an important role for wage transitions. Finally, our findings reveal large cross‐country differences across Europe.     

Inequality of Opportunity in Brazil: A Corrigendum

This note acknowledges and corrects a programming error in our paper “Inequality of Opportunity in Brazil” (Review of Income and Wealth, 53(4), 585–618, 2007). Once the error is corrected, our bounds approach to the identification of individual model parameters in the presence of omitted variable biases is much less useful than indicated in the original paper. In the specific context of the measurement of inequality of opportunity, this implies that the decomposition of overall inequality of opportunity into direct and indirect effects is not reliable. However, the parametric approach introduced in our paper remains useful for obtaining a lower‐bound estimate of overall ex‐ante inequality of opportunity, as proposed by Ferreira and Gignoux (2011).     

Human capital accumulation in R&D-based growth models

This paper develops a model that reproduces the essential aspects of the recent ICT-based economy using the framework of endogenous growth theory in which a central role is played by human capital accumulation. In particular, it considers a multi-sectoral growth model in discrete time with infinite horizon, endogenous growth, embodied technological progress, horizontal differentiation and “lab-equipment” specification of R&D, and with human capital accumulation (represented by the fact that households devote a fraction of their time to schooling), in order to take into account the crucial role of the latter when new technologies are present. In this model it is possible to obtain some important results, both analytically and through simulations, either in the case of constant productivity of schooling and in the case in which this productivity is a function of technological progress. The first conclusion is that the productivity of schooling affects the long run growth of the economy, contrary to the productivities of the other sectors, hence in this model human capital accumulation is the true engine of growth. It is then possible to study the reaction of the economy to different types of shocks, and to compare the results with the empirical evidence. The conclusion is that the model is able to reproduce such evidence, suggesting that the interaction between ICT and human capital is one of the drivers of the recent economic performance.     

Ordinal Bivariate Inequality: Concepts and Application to Child Deprivation in Mozambique

This paper introduces a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal bivariate categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the second by correlation‐increasing switches and/or median‐preserving spreads. For the canonical 2 × 2 case (with two binary indicators), we derive a simple operational procedure for checking ordinal inequality relations in practice. As an illustration, we apply the model to childhood deprivation in Mozambique.     

Economic transition, higher education and worker productivity in China

We investigate the role of education on worker productivity and firms' total factor productivity using a panel of firm-level data from China. We estimate the returns to education by calculating the marginal productivity of workers of different education levels based on estimates of the firm-level production function. We also estimate how the education level of workers and CEO contributes to firms' total factor productivity. Estimated marginal products are much higher than wages, and the gap is larger for highly educated workers. Our estimate shows that an additional year of schooling raises marginal product by 30.1%, and that CEO's education increases TFP for foreign-invested firms. Estimates vary substantially across ownership classes, the effect of schooling on productivity being highest in foreign-invested firms. We infer that market mechanisms contribute to a more efficient use of human capital within firms.     

Entry and exit as a source of aggregate productivity growth in two alternative technological regimes

This paper proposes a neo-Schumpeterian model in order to discuss how the mechanisms of entry and exit contribute to industry productivity growth in alternative technological regimes. Our central hypothesis is that new firms generate gains in aggregate productivity by increasing both the productivity level and competition intensity. By assuming that firms learn about the relevant technology through a variety of sources, and by allowing a continuous flow of entry and exit into the market, our study shows that firm exit and output contraction take mostly place among less productive firms, while output expansion and entry are concentrated among the more efficient ones. The greater is the competitive pressure generated by new entrants, the higher is the expected productivity level of established firms. Overall, our analysis suggests that micro analysis is the proper complement to aggregate industry studies, as it provides a considerable insight into the causes of productivity growth.     

Intergenerational mobility and macroeconomic history dependence

A large literature on ‘endogenous inequality’ has argued that persistent differences in macroeconomic performance across countries can be explained by historical inequality, owing to indivisibilities in occupational choice and borrowing constraints. These models are characterized by homogenous agents, a continuum of steady states (SSs) and lack of mobility in every SS. We show that introducing (even a little) heterogeneity in order to generate SS mobility shrinks the SS set dramatically. Mobile SSs are generically locally unique and finite in number. Sufficient conditions for global uniqueness and convergence of competitive equilibrium dynamics are provided.     

Economic growth and the riskiness of investment in firm-specific skills

This paper develops a simple growth model in which workers face risks to their firm specific skills, such as far-reaching changes in business and transaction styles or drastic technological innovations, and invest in general skills to prepare for these risks. This model demonstrates that, in the presence of the economy-wide positive externality of general skills, workers’ investment in general skills exhibits a strategic complement, and thus, a low-growth trap may arise. Since a lower risk to firm-specific skills decreases workers’ incentive to invest in general skills, multiple equilibria possibilities and the amount of government subsidies for general skill investment that are required to remove the bad equilibrium increase.     

Impact of Human Capital Endowments on Inequality of Outcomes in Cameroon

This paper evaluates the impact of human capital endowments on measured inequality in Cameroon. We first estimate determinants of household economic well‐being (HEW) in which human capital endowments are considered as endogenous effort‐related regressors, while controlling for exogenous circumstance‐related variables. Second, we simulate alternative counterfactual distributions of HEW: one in which human capital endowments are equalized; and the other in which variations are entirely attributable to the unobservable terms. Finally we compare inequality in the factual distribution of household well‐being with inequality in each of the simulated distributions. Direct and indirect exogenous opportunity‐inducing circumstances are inequality‐augmenting, whereas human capital endowments are inequality‐reducing in the actual distribution. Education and health interventions will ameliorate well‐being and mitigate inequality. Thus, leveling the playing ground for individuals to have equitable exposure to education, health and labor market participation is required for a low‐income country like Cameroon to enhance equity and sustainable household economic growth.     

Donations in a recursive dynamic model

Abstract.  This paper studies how donations respond to unexpected permanent changes in income and tax rates in a recursive dynamic model. The dynamic approach yields several interesting insights. If marginal tax rates are progressive, a permanent jump in a household's income increases its consumption and donations in the short run, but has no effect in the long run. The permanent income elasticity of current donations is likely to exceed one. If the marginal tax rate is flat, the jump in income raises consumption and donations in both the short and the long run. A permanent marginal tax rate cut raises consumption and donations in the long run if marginal tax rates are progressive, while it reduces donations in the short run if it has little direct impact on tax payments. If the marginal tax rate is flat, a tax cut has a positive effect on consumption in both the short and the long run, but has an ambiguous effect on donations.     

Schooling as a Lottery: Racial Differences in School Advancement in Urban South Africa

This paper analyzes the large racial differences in progress through secondary school in South Africa. Using recently collected longitudinal data we find that grade advancement is strongly associated with scores on a baseline literacy and numeracy test. In grades 8-11 the effect of these scores on grade progression is much stronger for white and coloured students than for African students, while there is no racial difference in the impact of the scores on passing the nationally standardized grade 12 matriculation exam. We develop a stochastic model of grade repetition that generates predictions consistent with these results. The model predicts that a larger stochastic component in the link between learning and measured performance will generate higher enrollment, higher failure rates, and a weaker link between ability and grade progression. The results suggest that grade progression in African schools is poorly linked to actual ability and learning. The results point to the importance of considering the stochastic component of grade repetition in analyzing school systems with high failure rates.     

Remittances to Latin America from migrants in the United States: Assessing the impact of amnesty programs

The magnitude of remittance flows to Latin America exceeds the combined inflows of foreign direct investment and official development assistance to the region. Since the United States is the destination country of the vast majority of migrants from Mexico, as well as from other Latin American countries, U.S. immigration policy can have a significant impact on the volume of remittances to the Latin American region. This paper studies how a generalized amnesty — a provision in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) — affected immigrants' remitting patterns. In models that control for immigrants' length of residence in the United States and for economic conditions in both the U.S. state of residence and the country of origin, we estimate substantial post-legalization drops in remittances sent home by Mexican-born migrants who legalized through IRCA. Given the potential positive impact of remittances on investment levels, entrepreneurship rates and the development of the financial sector, this finding underscores the importance of gaining a better understanding of the impact that immigration policies in immigrant-receiving countries may have on the stream of remittance flows to immigrant-sending communities in developing regions.     

The ins and outs of unemployment in Canada, 1976–2008

Abstract This paper studies the flows into and out of unemployment in Canada at an aggregate and a number of disaggregated levels. I find that inflows into unemployment are countercyclical and outflows are procyclical. At an aggregate level, changes in the rate at which individuals leave unemployment account for most of the changes in unemployment rates in Canada between 1976 and 2008. However, flows into unemployment matter more at some disaggregated levels. There are also some differences in the contributions of flows into and out of unemployment to changes in unemployment rates across the 1981–82 and 1990–92 recessions.     

On Endogeneity Bias: Some General Remarks and Correction of the ROIW Paper by Bourguignon,Ferreira, and Menéndez (2007)

This paper is a short note on the question of correcting for endogeneity bias in a regression. It also points out errors and omissions in the derivation of this bias in Bourguignon, Ferreira, and Menéndez (2007). We show that some assumptions needed for the derivation are not explicit and even under these assumptions, certain simplifications adopted are not valid. We support our points using simulation experiments.     

Coordinating the accumulation of physical and human capital in different institutional settings

This paper presents an out-of-equilibrium model to explain differences in the capacity to absorb new skill-biased technologies. The usual mainstream viewpoint focusing only on the role of labour markets will be re-examined in a context characterized by a sequential structure of both the processes of production and the skill formation, whose interaction brings about coordination failures harming the viability of the innovation process. Our out-of-equilibrium approach allows us to consider the more general interplay between stylized labour and product market characteristics, on the one hand, and educational policies, on the other hand. The robust results of the simulations show that educational policies appear to be important in restoring the required coordination both in rigid and in flexible systems, but for different reasons. In the former case, educational policies financed by taxation allow the system to escape a low-productivity final equilibrium. In the latter case, they contrast the financial constraint associated with a large decrease in the unskilled wage. Altogether, a moderate degree of rigidity seems to be the most appropriate institutional environment to reach the targets of viability and of a full exploitation of the technological potential.