Measuring fossil resource inequality—A case study for the UK between 1968 and 2000

This paper quantifies fossil resource inequalities amongst income quintiles in the UK between 1968 and 2000. It calculates a resource-based Gini coefficient using an input-output based resource allocation model.The results show that the Gini coefficient for total fossil resource consumption grew by 24% over the time period. By comparison the Gini coefficient for overall household expenditure rose by only 13%. The increase in resource inequality was prompted by the rising demand by high income quintiles for goods and services such as: “fuel and light” (heating and lighting the home), “car use” (private transportation), “recreation”, “travel” and “other services”. The analysis shows further that the Gini coefficient for “direct” fossil resources (“fuel and light” and “car use”) was lower and rose less steeply than the Gini coefficient for fossil resources embodied in other goods and services (indirect fossil resource requirements).Investigation into the drivers behind direct and indirect resource inequalities suggests a number of policy conclusions. Firstly, it is clear that policy initiatives to reduce fossil resource requirements (and the associated climate change impacts) must pay careful attention to distributional differences. Additionally, increased attention needs to be paid to the inequalities associated with indirect fossil resources consumption as well as the more visible direct resource inequalities.     

相对收入与个人效用——来自中国的证据

本文考察相对收入和相对消费对人们的影响程度,并比较社会中不同收入的不平等程度是否对这种影响起作用。笔者在中国城镇居民中进行了调查实验,用特定指标衡量人们对收入和消费的相对性关注程度。实证分析发现：（1）相对收入和绝对收入对个人效用的影响始终存在,但在炫耀性消费品（如汽车和住房）和非炫耀性消费品（如假期和保险）上的影响程度不同;（2）人们对相对收入和相对消费的关注程度较为集中在同一个区间里;（3）教育程度和职业显著地影响相对收入对人们的效用,男性比女性显著地更加在意汽车和住房的相对消费;（4）社会收入不平等没有显著影响对相对收入的关注度,但对住房消费的相对性有影响。这些发现为我们了解消费行为决策和认识宏观经济中收入不平等的消费效应有一定的启示。     

POLITICAL INEQUALITY,CENTRALIZED SANCTIONING INSTITUTIONS,AND THE MAINTENANCE OF PUBLIC GOODS

Centralized sanctioning institutions cultivate cooperation by eradicating the gains from free‐riding. Studies show that electing a community member to operate a centralized sanctioning institution further increases support for the public good. These studies have overlooked an all‐too‐common attribute of non‐laboratory elections: political inequality. In this paper, we replicate those studies and, then, introduce novel experimental treatments that examine how political inequality influences the cooperation‐enhancing effect of a democratic election to centralized sanctioning institutions. In our novel treatment conditions, participants receive either a random allotment of votes that they can use to elect a centralized sanctioning authority or an allocation of votes proportional to their earnings in a previously‐executed public goods game. We find that political inequalities created via the random allocation of votes do not hinder cooperation, whereas political inequalities created via past game play undermine elected authorities and diminish contributions to the public good from individuals advantaged by political inequality.     

Land Use in the 21st Century: Contributing to the Global Public Good

This paper focuses on the evolution of global public goods related to the world's land resources over the course of the 21st century, their potential impacts on the world's poorest households, as well as prospects for policy interventions aimed at enhancing these outcomes. It begins with global scale projections to 2100 of land use and associated goods and services, including food, fuel, timber, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. This is followed by in‐depth discussion of each of these services and the challenges of providing these public goods in sufficient quantities to advance societal welfare—especially that of the world's poorest households. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies aimed at promoting the provision of land‐based public goods and how they could be altered to be more pro‐poor. Within this context, the paper argues that access to geospatial analysis tools and information on climate, land use and tenure, poverty and environmental indicators will become increasingly valuable to both public and private decision makers.     

Heterogeneity, returns to scale, and collective action

Abstract .  I analyze the effects of resource inequality and valuation heterogeneity on the provision of public goods with increasing or decreasing returns to scale in production. The existing literature typically takes the agents' characteristics as given and known to the researcher. In contrast, this paper compares collective action provision across groups of agents with resources and valuations for the public good drawn from different known joint distributions. Specifically, I characterize the expected equilibrium public good level as function of various distributional properties and moments. A resource-valuation distribution that first-order stochastically dominates another distribution always results in higher expected public good provision level, independent of the production technology. With decreasing returns to scale in the public good production, higher resource inequality results in higher expected provision. With increasing returns the same result holds when the mean resource level is relatively low, but expected provision decreases in inequality when the mean resource level is high. A parallel result holds for agents' valuations.     

Changing Contours of Income Stratification and Decomposition of Income Inequality: Evidence from Recent Longitudinal Survey in India

The paper, based on India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data, tries to address the question- how unequal is India in terms of income distribution? Accordingly, the paper examines the trends, levels, sources and factors of income inequality in India between 2005 and 2012. Three important results stemmed from our analysis. First, in this paper we use Gini as a measure of inequality and find that income inequality in rural India has increased from 0.50 to 0.54 between 2005 and 2012, whereas, in urban India income inequality has increased from 0.48 to 0.49 during the same period. Next and most importantly, we decompose income inequality by income sources and find that amongst different sources of income inequality; the contribution of farm income in total inequality has decreased from 35 percent in 2005 to 21 percent in 2012 in rural India. On the other hand, the contribution of salaried income in total inequality has plummeted drastically from 65 percent in 2005 to 16 percent in 2012 in urban India. Finally, we use Theil’s T index from the class of Generalized Entropy (GE) inequality measures, while decomposing income by four most important factors; namely, place of residence, social, educational and occupational groups. It is irrespective of these factors; the relative share of within-group inequality is not only much higher than that of between-group inequality, also its share has increased between these two periods. Thus, our paper suggests that these mutually reinforcing inequalities, in the long run, if not addressed effectively, will create a hard-hitting division between the privileged and the rest in Indian society.

     

什么导致了中国城镇家庭的消费不平等

以消费不平等作为反映经济不平等的重要指标,本文系统研究了中国城镇家庭消费不平等的成因。采用中国跨省区城镇家庭调查数据,基于再中心化影响函数的实证分析结果显示：我国城镇家庭的收入与净资产的不平等是导致其消费不平等的重要原因。此外,户主的性别、婚姻状况、健康状况、宗教信仰以及家庭人口结构等因素也对城镇家庭消费不平等有着不同程度的显著影响。     

SEN'S CAPABILITY APPROACH AND GENDER INEQUALITY: SELECTING RELEVANT CAPABILITIES

This paper investigates how Amartya Sen's capability approach can be applied to conceptualize and assess gender inequality in Western societies. I first argue against the endorsement of a definitive list of capabilities and instead defend a procedural approach to the selection of capabilities by proposing five criteria. This procedural account is then used to generate a list of capabilities for conceptualizing gender inequality in Western societies. A survey of empirical studies shows that women are worse off than men on some dimensions, better off on a few others, and similarly placed on yet others, while for some dimensions the evaluation is unclear. I then outline why, for group inequalities, inequalities in achieved functionings can be taken to reflect inequalities in capabilities, and how an overall evaluation could be arrived at by weighting the different capabilities.     

An exploration of the positive effect of inequality on common property forests

This paper analyzes the household level forces driving the positive impact of inequality on common property forest cover in Mexico. A game theoretic model demonstrates that when common property goods are complementary to private inputs in production, an increase in wealth inequality can lead to a decrease in exploitation of the commons. Data from 350 Mexican common properties show that as inequality increases, those on the lower end of the land distribution are less likely to use the commons. The data also show a negative correlation between inequality and poverty. Alternative hypotheses for these results are considered.     

Carbon Taxation, Fuel Substitution and Welfare in Australia

This paper examines the potential role for fuel substitution in electricity production in reducing carbon dioxide emissions over a ten-year time horizon. This is achieved by adding fuel substitution to output changes resulting from demand responses arising from a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. A time profile of adjustments is developed. The tax required for Australia to meet a 20 per cent reduction in emissions from 1993 levels is calculated and effects on inequality and social welfare are examined. The paper also examines the potential effect of a subsidy towards the use of low-emission fuels, financed from the carbon tax. A subsidy produces an improvement in emissions abatement and a lower tax required to reach the emissions target.     

Sharing resources: The global distribution of the Ecological Footprint

This paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands, as measured by the Ecological Footprint, is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income. Measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable, just and efficient. Currently, different nations place different demands on the environment, i.e. the Ecological Footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe. Calculation of the Gini coefficient for total Ecological Footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use. Calculation of the Atkinson index shows how inequality in the Ecological Footprint is related to the inequality of income, and environmental intensity.     

Is inequality harmful for the environment? An empirical analysis applied to developing and transition countries

The object of this article is to examine the relation between social inequalities and pollution. First of all we provide a survey demonstrating that, from a theoretical point of view, a decrease in inequality has an uncertain impact on the environment. Second, on the basis of these conceptual considerations, we propose an econometric analysis based on panel data (fixed-effects and dynamic panel data models) concerning developing and transition countries for the 1988-2003 period. We examine specifically the effect of inequality on the extent of local pollution (sulphur dioxide emissions and organic water pollution) by integrating the Gini index into the formulation of the environmental Kuznets' curve.     

Income Distribution and the Demand Constraint

This paper argues thatthe interaction between inequality and the demand patterns forgoods is a potential source of persistent inequality. Incomedistribution, in the presence of non-homothetic preferences,affects the demand for goods and, due to differences in factorintensities across sectors, it alters the return to factors ofproduction and the initial distribution of income. Low inequalityleads to high demand for medium skilled intensive goods, providinga bridge over which low skill dynasties may transition to thehigh-skilled sector in the long run. Under high inequality however,the initial lack of demand for medium skilled labor breachesthis bridge from poverty to prosperity and inequality persists.     

研究生教育扩张、教育报酬与工资不均度——我国台湾地区的实证研究

本文探讨研究生教育扩张后,研究生教育报酬的组成与工资不平等的来源。本文设立大学毕业生与研究生两种劳动市场,并利用台湾"人力运用调查"数据进行实证分析。实证发现,研究生教育扩张对于两类劳动报酬均有显著的正向效果。高等教育劳动的工资不平等主要是两类劳动的组内不平等所致;世代效应是各组工资分配不平等的主要来源,惟年轻的研究生世代之不平等效果已减低。基于分配平等的观点,研究生教育扩张于社会整体有利。     

The geography of natural resources,ethnic inequality and civil conflicts

We study whether the spatial distribution of natural resources across different ethnic groups within countries causes spatial inequality and the incidence of armed conflict. By providing a theoretical rent-seeking model and analysing a set of geo-coded data for mines, night-time light emissions, local populations and ethnic homelands, we show that the spatial distribution of resources is a major driving factor of ethnic income inequality. Moreover, a spatially unequal distribution of natural resources induces rent-seeking behaviour and thus increases the risk of civil conflicts. Consequently, we extend the perspective of the resource curse to explain cross-country differences in income inequality and the onset of civil conflicts.     

资源税计征方式的探讨

随着近几年国际、国内资源价格的过快变动,资源税从量计征的局限性凸显。十八届三中全会提出要加快资源税改革,实行资源有偿使用制度和生态补偿制度。为此,探讨资源税从价计征的改革就显得尤为重要。在对资源税从量定额征收与从价定率征收方式的比较分析后,认为应针对不同资源的供求状况,对于供求状况不稳定、同质产品价格差异较大、计量单位不规范的消费品,按从价定率方式征收;对于供求基本平衡、同质产品价格差异不大、计量单位规范的消费品,按从量定额方式征收。但作为总体趋势,应更多地采用从价税形式的资源税。     

Trade Liberalization and Welfare Inequality: A Demand‐Based Approach*

There is strong evidence suggesting that different income groups consume different bundles of goods. Hence, trade liberalization can affect welfare inequality via changes in the relative prices of goods consumed by different income groups (the price effect). In this paper, I develop a framework that enables us to explore the role of the price effect in determining welfare inequality. I find that trade liberalization does benefit some income classes more than others. In particular, I show that the relative welfare of the rich with respect to that of the poor has a hump shape as a function of trade costs.     

Inequality,public good provision and the composition of trade

This paper investigates the effect of trade liberalization on the provision of public goods and shows that inequality also plays a vital role here. Public goods help enhance the productivity of firms, lower prices and raise profitability. The provision of public goods has different effects in closed and open economies. In an open economy, the impact of productive spending on increasing profit is stronger. Consequently, the opening up of the economy shifts the benefits of productive public goods from consumers to firms. As the median voters’, share of the firm’s profit rises, public goods become more appealing and flourish. Consequently, the manufacturing export is boosted by a rise in productivity.     

Environmental Policy in a Green Market

This paper studies the impact of some frequently-used environmental policies in a duopolistic market where purchasers are willing to pay more for less polluting goods. When consumers differ in their environmental awareness, a cleaner and a dirtier variant coexist in equilibrium. The higher the average willingness-to-pay for the good, the lower are variants' unit emissions but the higher are industrial aggregate effluents. A maximum unit emission standard reduces unit emissions of both variants, but boosts firms' sales and consequently increases industrial aggregate emissions. As a result, social welfare may be reduced. We also explore the effects of technological subsidies and product charges, including differentiation of charges.     

Environment,Directed Technical Change and Economic Policy

We study the effects of an economic policy in an endogenous growth general equilibrium framework where production of consumption goods requires two resource inputs: a polluting non-renewable resource and a non-polluting labour resource. The use of the former contributes to the accumulation of pollution in the atmosphere, which affects welfare. There is a specific research sector associated with each of those resources. We provide a full welfare analysis, and we describe the equilibrium paths in a decentralized economy. We go on to study the effects of three associated economic policy tools: a tax on the polluting resource, and two research subsidies. We show that the optimal environmental policy has two main effects; it delays the extraction of the resource and with it the level of polluting emissions and it reallocates research efforts, decreasing the amount put into “grey” research to the benefit of “green” research. We also show that the environmental policy is grey-biased in the short-term, and green-biased in the long-term. Finally, we compute the optimal values for these tools.