Land Reforms in the Presence of Monitoring Costs and International Trade

This paper elucidates the implications of transaction costs in agrarian labor hiring activities in a two-sector model of international trade and identifies a link between the size distribution of land and intersectoral allocation of productive inputs. Ceteris paribus , a more unequal distribution of land increases the amount of outmigration from agriculture, a shrinkage of the production possibility set, and a decrease (increase) in the volume of trade if and only if agriculture is the exportable (importable) sector. In addition, nonintervention in factor and commodity markets is constrained optimal only when land redistribution is not a feasible policy option.     

Mexican agricultural trade under the GATT

Expected effects from partially lifting tariff barriers on the Mexican agricultural sector are investigated using a restricted profit function (RPF) approach. Short-run and intermediate-run effects of the implementation of GATT minimum tariff provisions on Mexican agricultural trade are examined. Specification tests reveal the appropriateness of the RPF approach, that exports should not be aggregated with non-traded production into a single output, and that the farm sector behaves as an ‘almost’ price-taking, profit-maximizing firm. Policy simulations suggest important short-run changes in agricultural trade and chemical use and intermediate-run changes in agricultural trade, labour wage, chemical use, capital investments, and net farm income.     

SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF WORKERS' HOUSEIIOLD INCOME AND MACROECONOMIC ACTIVITIES IN JAPAN: 1963–88

An attempt is made to examine empirically the relationship between the size distribution of workers' household incomes and the variables expressing macroeconomic activities. As a preliminary implementation, the income shares are first estimated by decile groups and several subdivided top income groups. Applying Blinder and Esaki's regression approach to the estimated data, the ratio of job offers to applicants, inflation rate, and the terms of trade arc found to significantly affect the distribution. Of these variables, the terms of trade should be taken into account to ascertain precisely the income distribution in Japan where foreign trade heavily affects economic conditions.     

Privatization And Poverty: The Distributional Impact of Utility Privatization

This article examines the effects on poverty of privatization, an impact to which donors have given little attention in their concern with efficiency and markets. The analysis of the distributional impact of privatization activities draws on empirical cases in the utilities sector in a wide range of developing economies, principally in Africa and Latin America. After a critical consideration of the World Bank position on privatization strategies, and the arguments presented by donors on the pro–poor effects of these economic reforms, the article turns to the negative distributional effects. It is argued that privatization has demonstrably damaged the poor, whether through loss of employment and income, or through exclusion from, or reduced access to, basic services. This is mainly because private firms are principally concerned with profits, prices and costs, and are highly selective as to sectors and types of consumer. Meanwhile, the weakness of governance and regulatory capacity in many developing countries lead to poor control of market abuses. The article concludes by proposing that donors should take more account of local variations in state–market relations, and be prepared to give consideration to alternative economic strategies where privatization is not working as intended.     

Modeling Distribution Services and Assessing Their Welfare Effects in a General Equilibrium Framework

Most international trade models fail to account for the fact that almost all goods must pass through the distribution sector. The authors compare different approaches to modeling distribution within an Applied General Equilibrium framework and find that such modeling may significantly affect trade opening simulations. They also predict large potential gains from streamlining distribution. For instance, a 10% reduction in Japan's final goods distribution margins would benefit it as much as worldwide free trade would. They also find that, compared to trade opening, reducing margins leads to smaller inter‐sectoral production shifts and thus may engender less political opposition.     

SEGMENTED DEVELOPMENT AND THE WAY PROFITS GO: THE CASE OF INDONESIA*

In most developing countries profits account for a large proportion of national income, but their origin and use are widely divergent, related to the nature of ownership of the enterprise. Here an institutional classification of productive activities is developed and illustrated by the way profits go in Indonesia. By branch of industry they accrue to four categories of owners (foreign, public, private national incorporated, unincorporated). Next imputed labour income of the self-employed is separated in order to arrive at the functional distribution of income by sector, and lastly the destination (depreciation, interest, taxes, dividends, retained earnings) of each type of corporate capital income is shown. The estimates indicate a segmentation of activities, with regard to ownership as well as factor shares.     

Environmental Pollution in an Open Economy*

This paper attempts to analyze an interaction between international trade and domestic environmental pollution. A country engaging in international trade biases its domestic economic structure toward exportable sectors. The bias thus caused has a significant impact on the quality of the environment. It will be shown that a country can and should control international trade activities as a means of dealing with pollution problems. One of the paper's main purposes is to give a warning to a country which expands its international trade activities without taking serious consideration of its domestic environment.     

经营活动、融资策略对银 行利润和风险的影响 ——基于我国商业银行的验证

2008年全球金融危机引发了对银行经营模式的思考。本文基于我国97家商业银行2005-2012年的面板数据，综合考虑了银行经营活动和融资策略之间的关联，并系统验证了两者分别对银行风险和利润的影响。结果发现非利息业务的开展与融资渠道的拓宽都未起到显著提升利润、分散风险的效果。这个结论虽然与发达国家的经验存在一定的差异，但是由于我国商业银行积极开展非利息业务的动机较弱，并且仍然高度依赖存款融资，因此符合我国目前的情况。     

Institutional inequality and tax incidence

This paper analyses the effects of taxation when inequality is not innate. A theory of institutional inequality is presented which employs a trade model with circular production and the theory of clubs. Inequality is introduced by constraints on entry into sectors and ‘local’ groups within sectors. Individual time is treated as a fixed factor of production, and work and leisure are re-defined. The analysis suggests that when inequality is institutional and government policy does not alter the mechanisms by which institutions translate the distribution of power into the distribution of income, a redistribution of income by conventional tax-transfer schemes may not always be feasible.     

Trade liberalisation,poverty, and inequality in Vietnam: a quantile regression approach

This study examines the effects of trade liberalisation on rural household welfare, poverty, and inequality in Vietnam, with the use of multiple estimation strategies, including the panel quantile regression approach based on Canay's two-step estimator. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of trade liberalisation, we consider a set of household-level trade-related variables, including employment in export, import-competing, and manufacturing sectors. A unique panel data set is constructed from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys conducted in 2002, 2004 and 2006. We find that employment in trade-related sectors contributes significantly to rural household welfare. Moreover, the effects of trade-related employment on welfare are heterogeneous across the welfare/income distribution, in that trade-related employment sectors have different influences on different groups/quantiles of households.     

Agricultural trade liberalization,price changes,and environmental effects

Many analyses of agricultural trade liberalization have been undertaken but few have considered the effects on the environment. For the developed countries, reducing the degree of protection would result in less intensive production; therefore, environmental stress would be reduced. A reduction of trade barriers in industrial countries would result in higher world prices and in a somewhat lower world price variability. Assuming initially no policy changes for developing countries, the question is how the liberalization would affect the environment. Higher Prices in developing countries increase the level of production by intensifying production, particularly in the commercial sector, and by an area expansion. Both result in negative environmental effects. These could be partly offset by an increase in hired labor in the commercial sector, which might reduce pressure at the frontier and on marginal lands, as well as by the income effect. These off-setting effects may be small; however, the direction of the overall environmental effects cannot be determined unambiguously without empirical examination. At the global level, the beneficial economic effects of agricultural trade liberalization probably outweigh the expected negative environmental effects in developing countries, but this cannot be unambiguously established without valuation.     

Terms of Trade and Welfare: A General Analysis*

We develop a necessary and a sufficient condition for an improvement in terms of trade to reduce welfare under a general setting, which can accommodate various types of market stucture and trade distortions. We also apply the conditions to two specific cases, viz export subsidies and the existence of monopoly in a non-tradeable sector. It is found that a rise in price for an exportable commodity which is subsidized may well reduce welfare. Also, improvements in terms of trade may well harm the economy if there is a non-tradeable monopoly sector.     

Welfare and Distribution Effects of Water Pricing Policies

In this paper, distribution and welfare effects of changes in block price systems are evaluated. A method is discussed to determine, for a Marshallian demand function, equivalent variation in case of a block price system. The method is applied to compare, for the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, alternative pricing policies on the basis of their demand, welfare and distribution effects of changing water prices. Results show that there is a trade off between average welfare and income distribution. A pro-poor price system may result in lower average welfare than a flat price system, but in higher individual welfare for the poor. Moreover, there is a trade off between revenues for the water company and income distribution. Even though pro-poor price systems may not be as good for average welfare as flat price systems, their direct effects on poverty are important. Introducing pro-poor price systems, however, may have financial consequences for the water companies.     

Women and the social economy in transitional Russia

The present article analyses the role of the social economy in transitional Russia and its consequences for women. The changes in the economic system in the former Soviet Union and its effects is often analysed in general terms. One interesting aspect is whether the changes have similar effects on men and women. The aim here is to highlight how women's situation changes when the economic system changes and how Russian women adapt to these changes. Three types of activities which are carried out by women within the social economy are discussed below, where each of these activities are built on strategies for survival from the Soviet period: distribution of vital goods in rural areas, distribution of information to women and production of services. Although the social economy has a considerable gap to fill in Russia, this has not yet implied that the cooperative sector flourishes. Instead there is a danger that women go from paid work in the state sector to non-paid work within the voluntary sector.     

Finance and income inequality in Kazakhstan: evidence since transition with policy suggestions

Kazakhstan gained independence in 1990 and has undergone significant changes in economic, social and trade conditions since then. We analyse the effects of financial development on income inequality in Kazakhstan, incorporating economic growth, foreign investment, education and the role of democracy as the drivers. We establish that income inequality in Kazakhstan is impaired by financial development. In summary, we send three messages for policy purposes. First, strengthening financial sector is necessary to close the gap between ‘haves and have-nots’. Second, attracting FDI beyond the hydrocarbon sector is necessary to alleviate inequality. Finally, adaptation of education system to the new social and economic environment would help in improving income distribution.     

贸易开放对城镇居民收入及分配的影响

本文运用2002年中国家庭住户收入调查数据,检验了贸易开放对收入水平和收入分配的影响。研究发现贸易开放对收入水平具有显著并稳健的正向效应。本文进一步验证了贸易开放对收入分配的影响,结果显示:总体来看,贸易开放对高技能劳动力的影响大于对低技能劳动力的影响;贸易开放对外资企业职工收入的影响大于对其他企业类型职工收入的影响;贸易开放对资本报酬者的影响大于对劳动报酬者的影响。因此,在某种意义上说,中国国内的收入不平等在很大程度上是由于开放程度不均衡,一些地区和居民被排除在开放利益之外造成的。     

Trade Liberalization in Agriculture in Developed Nations and Incidence of Child Labour in a Developing Economy

This paper is an attempt to analyse the consequence of trade liberalization in agriculture in the developed countries on the incidence of child labour in a developing economy in terms of a three‐sector general equilibrium model with informal sectors. Adult labour and child labour are substitutes for each other in the two informal sectors of the economy and are used together apart from capital in producing two exportable commodities. The interesting result that appears from the analysis is that agricultural trade liberalization in the developed countries may be effective in bringing down the incidence of child labour in the system. The paper substantiates the desirability of trade liberalization in agriculture in the developed nations from the perspective of the developing economies for reasons other than welfare improvement.     

An Analysis of the Distributional Impact of Imputed Rent Taxation*

This paper examines the short-run distributional implications of withdrawing the implicit subsidies which accrue to owner-occupiers through the non-taxation of their imputed income. It is argued that the distributional implications of taxing imputed income from owner-occupied housing depend on the interaction of house value, equity and income over the life cycle of the owner-occupier and that a failure to take all of these factors into account could result in a policy of imputed income taxation having unintended distributional effects within the owner-occupied sector. The revenue gained from the introduction of such a policy, however, would be more than adequate to offset these effects.     

Global inequality and international trade

The paper analyses the effect of widespread trade liberalisationon global income inequality. The analysis of the trend in globalinequality during 1981–97, presented in the first partof the paper, shows that the apparent growth of income inequalityamong countries conceals a process of convergence. Some developingcountries achieved significantly faster economic growth thanthe advanced industrialised countries and, though small in number,they actually account for a majority of the population of thedeveloping world. Thus international inequality (i.e., the inequalityof distribution of per capita incomes among the world's population)in fact declined even though the inter-country income inequalityincreased. The analysis in the second part of the paper shows(i) that while improved trade performance did have a stimulatingeffect on growth performance of countries, trade liberalisationhad extremely varied effects on trade performance across countries,and (ii) that the distribution of benefits and costs of tradeliberalisation across countries has been such as to reduce internationalinequality without affecting inter-country inequality.     

Income Tax Evasion in a Unionised Labour Market

Labour market outcomes can depend on tax evasion since the returns from working are affected by the amount of taxes paid. In this paper, unionised workers are assumed to select the income which they declare. The rational trade union takes this decision into account. It is shown that the employment effects of a linear income tax are not altered qualitatively by tax evasion if the fine for evasion is a function only of the evaded tax. Moreover, the consequences of changes in the tax enforcement system are determined by the ability to choose evasion activities optimally. The existence of unrestricted tax evasion opportunities lowers wages.