Composition of Government Budget, Non-Single Peakedness, and Majority Voting

In this paper we study whether majority voting equilibria exist when preferences over public policies are not single peaked. The government levies a proportional income tax. Tax revenue is used to finance a uniform lump-sum transfer and public education. Individuals vote on the composition of the government budget. We show that the single-crossing property cannot be invoked to establish existence of a majority voting equilibrium. In a simple parametric example we find that cycles are pervasive.     

Heterogeneous Preferences, Education Expenditures and Income Distribution

This paper introduces heterogeneous preferences to a growth model which incorporates human capital, accumulated through either public or private education. The implications of heterogeneous preferences for income and its distribution are the focus of the paper. Public education expenditure is determined through a voting mechanism where the median preference rather than median income household is the decisive voter. The paper extends the work of Glomm and Ravikumar (1992) and shows first, that heterogeneous preferences increase income inequality in the private education model and second, public education can overcome the added heterogeneity and reduce income inequality. The results strengthen the arguments for public education as a redistributive mechanism.     

公众环境关注对企业绿色创新的影响

本文主要从正式和非正式制度视角，针对公众环境关注对公司治理和企业行为的影响进行研究。选用 2010—2018年A股制造业上市公司面板数据作为研究样本，考察公众环境关注与企业绿色创新行为之间的关系。研究结果发现，企业所在地公众环境关注能够驱动企业绿色创新行为。本文探究了两条影响渠道：首先，公众环境关注通过强化政府环境规制发挥作用，而政治关联的存在会削弱这一作用渠道；其次，公众环境关注通过提升企业生态观念发挥作用，与这一渠道一致，如果董事长是女性、更加年长或拥有家乡偏好，这一影响更为显著。研究结果表明，公众作为重要的利益相关者会影响企业的环境行为。     

Is the median voter decisive? Evidence from referenda voting patterns

This paper examines whether the voter with the median income is decisive in local spending decisions. Previous tests have relied on cross-sectional data while we make use of a pair of California referenda to estimate a first difference specification. The referenda proposed to lower the required vote share for passing local educational bonding initiatives from 67 to 50% and 67 to 55%, respectively. We find that voters rationally consider future public service decisions when deciding how to vote on voting rules. However, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that an income percentile below the median is decisive for majority voting rules, especially in communities that have a large share of high-income voters with attributes that suggest low demand for public services. Based on a model that explicitly recognizes that each community contains voters with both high and low demand for public school spending, we also find that an increase in the share of low demand voters is associated with a lower decisive voter income percentile for the high demand group. This two type model implies that our low demand types (individuals over age 45 with no children) have demands that are 45% lower than other voters. Collectively, these findings are consistent with high-income voters with weak preferences for public educational services voting with the poor against increases in public spending on education.     

Individual preferences for public education spending: Does personal income matter?

Standard redistributive arguments suggest that the impact of household income on preferences for public education spending should be negative, because wealthier families are likely to oppose the redistributive effect of public funding. However, the empirical evidence does not confirm this prediction. This paper addresses this ‘puzzle’ by focusing on the role of the inclusiveness of the education system and the allocation of public spending between tiers of education in shaping the impact of income on preferences. By using data from the International Social Survey Programme (2006), we show that, when access to higher levels of education is restricted (low inclusiveness) and when the share of public spending on tertiary education is high, the poor are less likely to support public education spending. This result suggests that reforming the education system towards greater inclusiveness might contribute to increase political backing for public investment in education from the relatively poor majority of the population.     

The impact of targeting policy on spouses’ demand for public goods,labor supplies and sharing rule

This paper studies the impact of targeted unconditional cash transfers on the spouses’ demand for public goods, labor supplies and sharing of resources. We estimate a collective labor supply model with distributional factors which is extended to include preferences over marketable public goods (including child goods). In this way, unlike previous research, we consider the impact of such transfers on the intrahousehold allocation of resources and distinguish between the labeling and recipient effects. We exploit the UK experience and find evidence in favor of the collective model with separable preferences over labor supplies and public goods. This finding implies a recipient effect and not a labeling effect of child benefits. Given the household’s unearned income, the bigger the wife’s bargaining power, the more the resources allocated to public goods (including child goods) and the wife’s private consumption. The results can be useful in the design of family policy which aims to improve the relative welfare of children within the family and alleviate any intrahousehold consumption inequalities.     

Environmental awareness and environmental Kuznets curve

We study the impacts of environmental awareness on environmental quality and income-pollution relationship. For our theoretical analysis, we examine a non-cooperative transboundary pollution control game between a less developed country (LDC) and a more developed country (MDC), and find that a higher level of environmental awareness by the government and citizens of the LDC has comprehensively beneficial effects on environmental policy and regional environmental quality. It also flattens the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and shifts it to the left. Our empirical findings confirm the theoretical projections. In the LDCs, environmental awareness plays an influential role in determining environmental expenditure; also, EKCs arrive at the peaks earlier, in countries where the public has higher environmental awareness.     

Political ideology and the intragenerational prospect of upward mobility

We re-examine the effect of prospects of upward mobility (POUM) on the support for redistribution. Unlike previous studies, we analyse this relation in an intragenerational context and consider the moderating effect of political ideology through which mobility expectations affect redistributive preferences. We find that the POUM effect is conditional on political preferences. That is, we find that only for right-wing individuals expected upward income mobility negatively affects support for redistribution. Left-wing individuals prefer redistribution, regardless of expected upward income movements.     

Tax Rate Variability and Public Spending as Sources of Indeterminacy

We consider a constant returns to scale, one sector economy with segmented asset markets of the Woodford type. We analyze the role of public spending, financed by labor income and consumption taxation, on the emergence of indeterminacy. We find that what is relevant for indeterminacy is the variability of the distortion introduced by government intervention. We show that the degree of public spending externalities in preferences affects the combinations between the tax rate and its variability under which indeterminacy occurs. Moreover, we find that consumption taxes can lead to local indeterminacy when asset markets are segmented.     

The dynamics of environmentalism and the environment

We study the relationship between environmental preferences and the environment. Preferences are transmitted intergenerationally and through social interactions, where we assume that agents are more likely to adopt environmental preferences the larger the amount of pollution. In the basic setting we find that both converge non-monotonically towards an interior steady state. When including technical change we notice that there will be no change in the steady state level of the environment unless technical change is sufficiently strong, which stands in stark contrast to the literature. Upon introducing environmental laws we find that these may lead to a virtually pollution-free environment. This happens if environmental laws are implemented when public support is strong enough.     

GROWTH, POVERTY, AND INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA: A CAUSAL ANALYSIS, 1970–94

Taking advantage of consistent poverty and income inequality data for 12 Latin American countries between 1970 and 1994, we analyze the determinants of changes in the incidence of urban and rural poverty and in Gini coefficients over spells of years, stressing in particular the role of aggregate income growth. We find that income growth reduces urban and rural poverty but not inequality. We also find that income growth is more effective in reducing urban poverty if the levels of inequality and poverty are lower, and the levels of secondary education higher. We show that there is an asymmetry in the impact of growth on poverty and inequality, with recession having strong negative effects on both poverty and inequality. Since growth does not reduce inequality, economic cycles create ratchet effects on the level of inequality. However, post-structural adjustment growth is quite effective at reducing poverty, particularly if inequality is low.     

Judicial error and cooperation

Cooperation can be induced by an authority with the power to mete out sanctions for free riders, but law enforcement is prone to error. This paper experimentally analyzes preferences for and consequences of errors in formal sanctions against free riders in a public goods game. With type I errors, even full contributors to the public good may be punished. With type II errors, free riders may go unpunished. We find that judicial error undermines cooperation and that the effects of type I and II errors are symmetric. To investigate their relative (dis-)like for error, we let subjects choose what type of error to prevent. We find that subjects prefer type II over type I errors. However, the strength of preferences for preventing type I errors is fully in line with a motive to maximize income and does not indicate any additional psychological or fairness bias against type I errors.     

Who benefits from big government? A life satisfaction approach

Which impact does government size have on life satisfaction, and how do effects of bigger government differ between income groups in society? Previous studies typically employed country averages and thus neglected possibly heterogeneous happiness effects between income groups. This paper addresses empirically the effects of government spending on subjective well-being of individuals belonging to different income groups. Our analysis is based on individual data from 25 European countries participating in the European Social Survey. In contrast to most previous studies we take account of the endogeneity between relative income position and reported life satisfaction by an instrumental variable approach. Our results suggest, first, that most government spending categories, including social protection, are on average negatively related to individual well-being. Secondly, estimated marginal effects of health, education and social protection spending at different income levels show that spending increases always have a stronger negative effect on high income groups’ well-being than on low income groups’ life satisfaction. For all government spending categories, marginal happiness effects of higher public spending are clearly negative for income groups at the top.     

Credit constraint and human capital investment: an empirical analysis using Brazilian household budget survey

This article is a first step towards understanding the relationship between credit market imperfections and inequality of opportunity in skill formation. The main goal is to investigate the effects of the credit constraint on the optimal human capital decision, in terms of degree of schooling, taking into account the household preferences for education. Our starting point is a theoretical model of human capital investment decision with credit constraint. Following a previous model in the literature, we propose a reduced-form approach that estimates the relation between education decision and initial wealth in Brazil. Our empirical analysis is conducted using data from a Brazilian Household Budget Survey (Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares), for years 2002–2003 and 2008–2009. Our results point out that education decision is in fact credit constrained. The empirical results show a strong and highly significant effect of wealth on educational level of children, teenagers and adults, even controlling by education expenditures. But we find no evidence of credit constraint on high level education decision, like undergraduate and graduate levels.     

Optimal tax rules and public sector efficiency with an externality in an overlapping generations model

This paper examines optimal tax rules and public sector efficiency, integrating them in a second-best world with pollution by using an overlapping generations model. The second-best world is characterized by the comparative statics of green preferences. The main results obtained are as follows. First, the marginal cost of public funds may be reduced by the externalities, regardless of the choice of taxes. Second, optimal environmental and non-environmental tax rules are additively and directly affected by the dynamic efficiency of capital accumulation per unit labour (DECAL), and indirectly by it, through the efficiency of the public sector. Environmental taxes going beyond Pigovian ones may be welfare-improving if the DECAL is improved by the environmental tax. Even optimal non-environmental tax rules should additively and directly counter the dynamics of pollution to consider the income effects of the optimal tax system for the future. Third, the “additivity property,” or the “principle of targeting,” does not hold even in the absence of incentive compatibility constraints. The essential reasons for this are clarified as follows: distortions that should be countered by taxes; that is, the income effects of the optimal tax system and the DECAL in this model, break the equality between optimal environmental taxes and the externalities measured by governments. Finally, growing environmental concerns may, in fact, increase pollution. The inverse relationship between environmental and labour income taxes may not hold.     

Who votes for public environmental goods in California?: Evidence from a spatial analysis of voting for environmental ballot measures

Voting referenda provide direct evidence of the demand for public goods. A number of previous studies have used referenda to analyze the support for public environmental goods. These studies have used aggregate data from large jurisdictional units (usually counties) and summary income measures such as the mean or median, and have usually found that higher income areas offer greater support for environmental propositions. We examine environmental referenda voting in California using census block group data, spatial dependence controls, and detailed income distribution data. We find that household income has a negative marginal effect on environmental referenda voting for most of the income range when using census block data. In addition, controls for spatial dependence significantly reduce the magnitude of most coefficients. This suggests that OLS estimates of referenda determinants are biased. We also show that county level data may be subject to severe aggregation bias and might not be appropriate for referenda studies.     

Social security, public education and the growth-inequality relationship

We study how the relationship between economic growth and inequality depends upon the levels of funding of two of the largest government programs, public education and social security. We do this in the context of an overlapping generations economy with heterogeneous agents where the government collects a tax on labor income to finance these programs. We show that in our model an increase in government spending on social security reduces income inequality and can have a non-monotonic effect on growth. When the initial level of social security funding is low, as is the case in most poor economies, then its increase will enhance growth. When its funding level is high as is typical for developed countries, we show that its further increase can slow down growth while reducing income inequality. These results obtain regardless of whether the increase in social security funding is financed by a tax increase or by cutting the public education budget. We also find that the effects of increasing the level of public education expenditures or the overall size of the government budget (holding the budget composition fixed) are characterized by similar non-monotonic growth-inequality relationships.     

Valuing Local Environmental Amenity with Discrete Choice Experiments: Spatial Scope Sensitivity and Heterogeneous Marginal Utility of Income

Using discrete choice experiments we examine preferences for the spatial provision of local environmental improvements in the context of regeneration policies. Amenities we consider are: improvements to areas of open space, recreation facilities and other public spaces; street cleanliness; restoration of derelict properties; and the provision of paths dedicated to cycling and walking. We include the spatial scope of the policy as an attribute, making the trade-off between environmental amenity and its spatial provision explicit. We employ a novel estimator for average willingness to pay (WTP) for mixed logit models with a random cost coefficient, which is robust to the presence of price insensitive respondents and performs well relative to mixed logit estimation in WTP space. We find that the spatial scope of the policy affects both the intensity and heterogeneity of preferences, and that these effects are of statistical and economic significance.     

Economic growth and the environment: Theory and facts

Several recent papers propose competing theoretical explanations for the empirical observation of an inverted U-shape relationship between environmental degradation and per-capita income. We propose the following test of the theory: calibrate a theoretical model to an already developed economy using information unrelated to the pollution–income curve. Then simulate the model starting from a less developed initial condition and compare the predicted pollution–income relationship with that in the data. Our results are mixed. Some support exists for the theory that the inverted U-shape results from a corner solution in which less developed countries do not abate pollution. However, because we find abatement is relatively inexpensive, the model predicts pollution peaks at a level of per capita income much lower than that observed in our U.S. data. For some pollutants, we find evidence of a structural break in preferences in the early 1970s. When the structural break is added, the model performs better for two of three pollutants.     

Financing Education in Europe: The Globalization Perspective

This paper examines the role of globalization on public spending on education in Europe. With the implementation of the Bologna process, the changes taking place in the educational structure in Europe have highlighted the importance of public education expenditures. Taking into account the effects of trade, income, and socio‐demographic factors, we study the impact of globalization on public education expenditure at preprimary, primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions using a panel data model for 25 EU countries for the 1998–2010 period. Our findings with different indices of globalization depict a positive effect on education financing. The use of legal and institutional variables, the inclusion of the crisis and euro dummies, and further control variables do not alter our main findings. The Bologna dummy variable is not found to have a significant effect on public education financing, indicating that the integration goals under this process have not translated into increasing levels of public expenditure for education.