The Meritocratic Elite vs. the Common Man: Income Inequality in the Affluent OECD Countries

Our goal is to highlight the relationship between vested interests of the meritocratic elite and the deteriorating situation of the common man. We provide an example of rising income inequality in selected OECD countries over the past thirty years. Income inequality is growing, despite the increase in labor productivity based on technological progress, which we prove by using robust panel regression models. Our findings could be explained by the effect of “extreme meritocracy” that describes a situation in which wages for “the working rich” are growing faster than their productivity, and creating wage stagnation for the middle-class workers.     

中国居民收入分配格局中的阶层变动分析

通过分析16个社会群体的收入水平与人口比重对应关系,研究中国阶层收入分配格局演变趋势与规律。在中国居民收入分配格局经历的两次重大变迁过程中,第一次使得农民阶级分化出农民工、私营企业员工、乡镇企业职工、个体劳动者及私营企业主等阶层;工人阶级分化为白领工人、个体劳动者、国有企业职工、其他企业职工、离退休人员、民营企业职工、城镇集体职工和企业经营者等主要阶层;知识分子则发展为企业经营者、自由职业者、公务员和部分白领工人。第二次变革使得其他企业职工、国有企业职工和个体劳动者先后进入中产阶层范畴,公务员则进入上产阶层。现阶段,其他企业职工、国有企业职工、个体劳动者和白领工人四个阶层属于中产阶层;上产阶层由公务员、自由职业者、企业经营者和私营企业主四个阶层构成。     

论提高全民的收入水平

提高全民的收入水平，是我国今后在收入分配制度方面的改革重点和目标，即实现扩大中等收入阶层的比重，提高低收入者收入水平，消灭贫困人口。为此，在收入分配理论方面要实行一系列创新和突破；实践上，中等收入者的扩大，只能或主要来自于中低收入者收入水平的提高。消灭贫困其实质是提高广大农民的收入水平问题。     

A Class of Social Welfare Functions That Depend on Mean Income and Income Polarization

A well‐established strategy for evaluating alternative income distributions is based on the use of an abbreviated social welfare function that depends only on mean income and an inequality index. In keeping with this literature, we study the existence of social welfare functions that can be written as a trade‐off between efficiency and income polarization. This paper proposes a class of social welfare functions consistent with the Esteban and Ray, and Duclos, Esteban and Ray income polarization indices. For this result, we expand the domain for personal preferences to incorporate not only own income but also the well‐being of others. In addition, we link our proposal to the literature on relative satisfaction. The approach is illustrated by an empirical application using the CPS database for the United States in the period 1991–2010.     

Income inequality in China: causes and policy responses

The phenomenal economic growth in China has been accompanied by a rapid increase in income inequality. This paper reviews the historical trends and patterns of income inequality in China, discusses the potential causes underlying rising income inequality, and applies the functional distribution of income approach in understanding China’s income inequality. This analytical approach highlights how rising return to capital relative to wage incomes can be an important source for increasing income inequality in China. The paper provides the evidence which shows that the rapid economic growth in China has been relying on a model that pays high returns to various kinds of capital including financial capital and real estate, while the ownership of capital is very unequal. This finding prompts us to rethink about the causes of China’s income inequality and to formulate appropriate policies based on the new way of understanding this pressing issue of income distribution in China.     

基于主体视角的国民收入分配格局研究——对中、日两国的实证比较

国民收入在居民、企业和政府之间的分配格局合理与否决定着居民福利水平的提高、企业的持续发展和公共服务的持续发展能否协调共进。中国与日本的国民收入分配格局存在着明显的差异。与日本相比,在国民收入初次分配和再分配中,中国住户部门的所得份额明显偏低,而企业部门和政府部门所得份额明显偏高,中国的国民收入分配格局存在着明显的向企业和政府倾斜的倾向。这对国内消费需求的增长、居民生活水平的提高和产业结构的升级都产生了不利的影响,应该采取提高劳动者报酬收入在国民收入初次分配中的比重、减轻居民税收负担、增加政府对居民的转移支出、放松对企业向职工提供补助和福利的管制等措施,提高居民在国民收入分配中的比重。     

An Economic Definition of the Middle Class

The concept of a middle class is prevalent in both common parlance and the social sciences; concern is frequently expressed that the middle class is shrinking, and politicians often position themselves as champions of the middle class. Yet the phrase “middle class” is extremely ambiguous; no consensus exists on either the upper bound or the lower bound separating the middle class from other classes. The present paper employs the government’s official poverty line as the demarcation between the poor and the middle class, and develops an equivalent distinction to separate the middle class from the wealthy. Based on the new definition, the paper provides some rough empirical estimates of the size of the American middle class over the 1989–2004 period.

从政策角度对我国农民收入现状的一个解释

农村经济体制改革以来,我国农村经济政策的直接目标已经由以往的以增产为主逐步转向以保证农民增收为主,农民收入水平也有了很大的提高。然而,农民收入现状仍然不容乐观：一是绝对收入水平偏低;二是城乡收入差距和地区收入差距逐步加大。笔者从政策角度对我国农民收入问题进行了分析,并对我国农业政策效应形成了五个方面的基本判断。     

中国居民收入分配差距扩大的制度性因素分析

近年来,中国居民的收入差距在日益的扩大。这种扩大有多方面的原因,但是总的来说主要是市场化和非市场化这 两个方面。本文着重分析了中国居民收入分配差距扩大的制度性因素。     

改革开放以来湖南城乡居民收入两极分化演变研究

利用1980--2010年湖南居民收入的时间序列数据,对湖南城乡居民收入两极分化的演进及其影响因素进行了实证分析,结论表明：1980--2010年,湖南城乡居民收入差距与收入两极分化在震荡中加大,其速度快于全国水平。基于分析,提出了相应的政策建议。     

财政政策视野中的中国收入分配制度重构

按照科学发展观的要求,财政政策在调节收入分配差距的同时,还需要就整体收入分配格局进行重构,提供相应的政策导向,这将成为引领中国收入分配相关财政政策的新思路。这种新思路主要体现在重构中国社会分配的基本契约关系,促进社会结构分层的变迁演进,推进中国财政政策的阳光化进程等几个方面。     

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。     

Coping with Technological Change: The Role of Ability in Making Inequality so Persistent

This study provides an explanation to the evolution of wage inequality over the last 30 years and supports this explanation with evidence. A faster rate of technological progress introduces new unknown elements at the workplace. The need to cope with the unknown accentuates the role of ability and thus increases wage inequality within and between education groups. Inasmuch as education is an irreversible investment project the rise in within group inequality BOOSTS UP the rise of between group inequality. Guided by this theory we turn to the PSID for evidence. Using parents' education to approximate child's ability we show the following set of results: (a) Controlling for education of the child, parents' education contributed much more in the 1980s to his wage growth than in the 1970s. (b) The correlation between the parents' and the child's education increases from the 1970s to the 1980s. (c) The return to college education for an individual with no ability rents did not change—it remains steady at the 23 percent. (d) Facts (a)–(c) CANNOT be attributed to the impact of parent's income. It is parents' education and not parents' income that is more relevant for son's economic outcomes in the 1980s.     

论收入分配理论的历史演变和劳动价值论的实践价值

马克思的劳动价值论继承和发展了斯密、李嘉图等人承认人类财富主要来源于劳动的理论 ,既表明了劳动与物的共性 ,又表明了劳动与物的区别 ,为我们结合现代实际建立适合我国先进生产力发展要求和最广大劳动人民根本利益的收入分配理论 ,奠定了最重要的理论基础。在马克思劳动价值论的基础上 ,创立适合中国实际和需要的能够解放劳动、保护劳动的收入分配基础理论 ,是顺应历史发展潮流 ,符合经济学现代趋势 ,适应中国发展要求 ,是一项具有重要实践价值的工作。     

Environmental Goods and the Distribution of Income

The paper presents a (theoretical) investigation of the distributional impacts of environmental commodities. It introduces an appropriate framework, defines concepts for measuring benefits and examines the determinants of benefit incidence within this setup. Its emphasis is on methodology and on recognizing the relevant economic variables and information. It turns out that in an equal-preference model the magnitude of the income elasticity of marginal willingness to pay for an environmental good is the crucial variable determining progressivity. It is related to a number of other elasticities which are more easily accessible to an empirical estimation.     

Inequality of Income and Consumption in the U.S.: Measuring the Trends in Inequality from 1984 to 2011 for the Same Individuals

This paper examines the distribution of income and consumption in the U.S. using one dataset that obtains measures of both income and consumption from the same set of individuals. We develop a set of inequality measures that show the increase in inequality during the past 27 years using the 1984–2011 Consumer Expenditure Survey. We find that the trends in income and consumption inequality are similar between 1984 and 2006, and diverge during and after the Great Recession. For the entire 27‐year period we find that consumption inequality increases almost as much as does income inequality.     

Manufacturing Wage Differentials and Employment in Some Scandinavian Countries, the U.S. and the U.K.: An Analysis of Variance Approach

This paper presents some empirical evidence on the factors determining changes in wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers and in their employment. An ``analysis of variance' (ANOVA) model is estimated using UN data for five OECD countries in order to assess the relative importance of industry-specific, country-specific and international shocks (as well as interactions between industry and country effects). It is found that both international shocks and national policies affect wage differentials over the whole sample, whilst skill-biased technical change (SBTC) was a significant factor in the seventies. Employment responds mainly to international shocks, although national policies and SBTC were important determinants in the seventies and eighties respectively. Some of the results are found to be sensitive to the technology level of the industries considered.     

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.     

An empirical test of marginal productivity theory

We explore an hitherto unused approach to testing marginal productivity theory. Our method rests on the simple idea that, under the assumption of a linear homogeneous production function, residual profits are informative about the discrepancies between factor payments and marginal products. Our empirical application using data on manufacturing plants in Chile suggest moderate deviations from marginal productivity theory which depend on firm size.     

我国人力资本参与企业收益分配的制度分析

本文认为静态地、抽象地分析企业中人力资本所有权和物质资本所有权谁占支配地位抑或平等是没有意义的。在企业中，人力资本个人收益与企业的总体收益有不同的取向，而非简单地转换。人力资本需要“自己给自己定价”，即靠自身的才干、贡献大小通过有效的机制确定自己从企业收益和剩余收益中分割的多少。因此，设计能够释放人力资本能动性的产权制度和企业治理结构，是中国企业缩小与国外的劳动生产率差距、提高竞争力、加快创新的必然要求。