Consumer Heterogeneity,Free Trade,and the Welfare Impact of Income Redistribution

Demographic differences, like young and elderly, and healthy and disabled, are summarized as consumers' heterogeneity in expenditure shares, and introduced into an otherwise standard Heckscher–Ohlin model, together with income distribution in this paper. We prove that free trade may hurt consumers who spend more on the exporting good if the volume of trade is small, while redistributing more income to consumers who spend more on the exporting good may make everyone in the country better off. By contrast, redistributing more income to consumers who spend more on the importing good may make everyone in the country worse off.     

Income Mobility, Inequality and Social Welfare

It is often argued that an observation of rising annual income inequality need not have negative normative implications. The argument is that if there has been a sufficiently large simultaneous increase in mobility, the inequality of income measured over a longer time period can be lower despite the rise in annual inequality. In this paper, it is shown by example that if normative implications are drawn from a standard social welfare function, the set of circumstances put forward in the above argument are not sufficient to guarantee that social welfare will improve. The reason is that even though rising mobility does reduce longer term inequality, it also increases the variability of income profiles over time and the latter has a detrimental social welfare effect. Hence, there are two types of mobility: one which reduces inequality (regression to the mean), but another that increases inequality (relative movements uncorrelated with incomes). Further, if individuals' aversion to income variabiltiy is sufficiently larger than the social welfare judge's aversion to inequality, then an increase in mobility, no matter how large, cannot offset the negative normative effect of rising annual inequality.     

个税改革、收入不平等与社会福利

2005年以来,历次中国个税改革均以提高免征额和调整税率表为主要内容,上述改革措施的分配效应一直存在争议.文章通过建立一个能体现个税累进性与税负归宿的新凯恩斯动态随机一般均衡模型,分解并模拟了提高免征额和增加税率累进幅度所导致的分配效应.结果表明:(1)提高免征额扩大了税前收入不平等的波动,恶化了宽松货币政策等外生冲击下的初次分配.此外,免征额的提高削弱了累进税率对收入初次分配的调节能力.(2)在就业扩张过程中,提高免征额所带来的税负归宿变化改善了税后收入不平等,而且在免征额提升后,税率累进幅度的提高能进一步改善收入再分配.当然,个税改革的初次分配效应和再分配效应均具有状态依存特征,在就业与劳动收入下降时会带来相反的分配效应.(3)提高免征额会导致更大的福利损失,并削弱累进税率对福利损失的抑制作用.     

收入分布、破坏性创新与社会福利

通过构建破坏性创新企业与在位企业进行市场竞争的双寡头博弈模型,分析在具有不同收入分布特征市场中破坏性创新企业的市场绩效及社会福利。研究发现,在收入差距较大的市场中,破坏性创新企业获得更大的市场份额和利润,社会福利相对较小;相反,在收入水平较高且分布趋向同质的市场中,在位企业获得更大的市场份额和利润,并且,破坏性创新厂商的利润随着收入水平的提高而降低。同时,随着收入水平的提高,两企业的产品质量不断提高,但质量差距不断扩大,社会总福利也随之增加。最后,进一步阐释了破坏性创新更多地发生于贫富差距较大的新兴市场的微观机制,为企业根据不同市场的收入分布特征选择竞争战略提供理论依据,为相关国家基于收入分布特点制定限制或支持破坏性创新创业政策提供理论参考。     

中国社会保障收入再分配效应研究——以社会保险为例

社会保障是调节收入分配的重要工具。社会保障的收入再分配作用需要在客观调查的基础上充分考察社会公众的主观评价。中国社会科学院课题组2012年在四川、黑龙江、湖南、山西、江苏、海南等省采用经验分层和非严格随机抽样的方法进行了城乡入户问卷调查,对社会保障的收入再分配效应进行了宏观理论分析和实证分析,包括了社会保障收入再分配效应的客观测量与主观评价。本研究表明,我国社会保障收入已经成为城乡居民收入的重要组成部分,社会保障在调节收入分配方面发挥的作用日益显著。从总体上看,社会保障制度是缩小收入差距的,但是的确存在一些扩大收入差距的制度安排。由于多方面的原因,我国社会保障制度调节收入分配方面的效果还存在若干急需解决的重要问题。     

Designing a Basic Income System with a Social Welfare Function

There is an irreducible conflict between, on the one hand, the desire to allocate income in society in an equitable way and, on the other, the desire to alleviate poverty. The conflict materializes itself in the problem of designing a basic income (or negative income tax) system which requires formulating a workable compromise. This paper approaches the problem through solving a mathematical program whose utility‐based objective function explicitly embodies both considerations. The solution describes a simple basic income system and its comparative statics indicate how the specification of the objective function leads to a more, or less, pro‐poor solution.     

异质性雇用成本、社会福利与劳动力市场结构性改革

通过扩展Blanchard和Galí(2010)的雇用成本模型,文章构建了一个包含正规部门与非正规部门的异质性雇用成本的NKMP-DSGE模型.外生冲击的贝叶斯脉冲响应函数表明,正规部门就业与非正规部门就业对于同一外生冲击具有不同的反应,这意味着考虑不同部门的异质性是合理的.社会福利分析的结果指出,非正规部门的存在尽管通过降低名义价格刚性而改善了社会福利,但通过失业回滞却导致了社会福利的恶化;而且总体而言恶化了社会福利.这一发现为我国当前正在积极推行的劳动力市场结构性改革提供了理论依据.在此基础上,文章进一步考察了劳动力市场结构性改革的效应.研究发现,不管是长期效应还是短期效应,改革都有利于改善劳动力市场的表现.     

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.     

Foreign Management,International Capital,and Income Redistribution

This paper examines the impact of foreign management as a separate input in a competitive economy open to both international trade and international movement of productive capital. Three inputs (capital, labor, management) are used to produce two final goods in a model characterized by competition, homogeneous products, and full employment. This model provides a simple starting point for the study of multinational firm activity, building on the fundamental competitive factor proportions model of production and trade. A clear distinction arises between international movements of capital and management, and international movements of the two inputs are linked. [F 11, F 23]     

国外社会规范和群体规则影响社会福利的研究综述

长期以来，经济学总是把规范作为外生的，但实际上，规范也会变化，而且在现代社会，它的变化速度一直在加快。Young(1998)曾经尖锐地指出，种种规范调控着经济和社会生活的许多方面，然而，经济学家们很少注意它们。近年来，国外一些经济学家开始考察社会规范和群体规则的形成过程，外界因素如何作用于现存的社会规范和群体规则，并分析在某些环境中社会规范和群体规则的演化及这些演化会对社会福利产生什么影响。本文对这一方面的研究观点综述如下。     

On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime

This article analyzes a general equilibrium model in which agents choose to specialize in either legitimate or criminal activities. Expenditures on police to apprehend criminals, as well as income redistribution, are determined endogenously through majority voting. We investigate how crime, redistribution, and police expenditures depend on characteristics of the underlying distribution of income-earning abilities and on the apprehension technology. Our model accounts for the positive correlation between inequality and crime, the positive correlation between expenditures on police and redistribution, and the lack of correlation between crime and redistribution observed in U.S. data.     

信贷约束、再分配及不平等对增长的影响

当信贷对那些禀赋较少的当事人是完全可获取时,再分配对长期增长无影响.当信贷不可得时,再分配可以促进经济增长.富人与穷人之间的不平等程度越高,越容易刺激穷人掠夺富人的财富,并牺牲了总的投资与增长.恰当的再分配政策设计可以有利于禀赋少者并促进总的产出,并使社会朝着增长与和谐的方向努力.     

生态环境、经济收入与公众健康的关系——基于我国29个省市区面板数据的经验研究

公众的健康水平受到其所处自然和社会环境的共同影响,文章利用我国29个省市区的面板数据,构建了同时包含生态环境与经济收入因素的公众健康影响模型,检验了生态环境污染、治理状况以及经济收入、收入不均对人口健康的影响。研究结果表明,环境污染已经威胁到人们的健康,而污染治理投入能缓解污染的危害,同时收入公平性比绝对收入水平对健康影响更大。最后,在此基础上指出走人与自然协调、社会公平发展道路的重要意义。     

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.     

Majority Voting over Publicly Provided Goods, Redistribution, and Income Taxation

Federal, state, and many local governments make decisions that involve taxation, redistribution, and provision of public goods. Positive models to study these issues encounter the well‐known problem that majority‐voting equilibrium (MVE) may fail to exist in such multidimensional models. In this paper, with reasonable restrictions on preferences, I provide sufficient conditions for the existence of an MVE in a model with linear income tax and government expenditure policies that affect individual labor/leisure choices. My majority‐voting result takes account of the possibility that low‐skill individuals will drop out of the labor force under some tax and expenditure configurations.     

免征额与个人所得税的收入再分配效应

免征额一直以来都是个人所得税改革与研究的重点领域。本文通过构建个人所得税的税制模拟模型,证明了免征额的大小与单一税率以及多级累进税率个人所得税的平均有效税率大小呈反比,与累进性的大小成正比,并且随着免征额的增大,单一税率以及多级累进税率个人所得税的收入再分配效应呈先上升后下降的倒U字型分布。这对于完善个人所得税税制设计的理论体系,以及指导个人所得税改革实践均具有重要意义,为我国现阶段的工薪所得税与未来综合征收的个人所得税更好地发挥调节收入分配差距的作用提供了重要依据。     

居民收入分配规范函数及其福利评价——模型及实证分析

近年来,我国居民收入分配差距日益扩大的问题已引起学术界的高度重视,有关于此的讨论也一直在继续,虽然国内学者关于这方面的实证研究已经达到了较高水平,但是将规范分析与实证分析结合起来的研究却还是一个崭新的课题。文章旨在将价值判断引入收入分配领域,得出影响居民收入差距的几个重要因素,并简要分析了各个因素对居民收入分配的影响,设计了影响居民收入分配的规范函数,进行了实证分析,最后利用阿特金森指数检验了居民收入分配效用,指出了现阶段调节国内居民收入差距的努力方向。     

Income Redistribution and Direct Taxes and Transfers in New Zealand

This article examines the redistributive effects of direct taxes and transfers in New Zealand. First, it reports summary measures of the income tax-and-transfer system using the NZ Household Economic Survey. Second, the article examines the characteristics of low-income NZ taxpayers. A decomposition by individual and household characteristics shows that different groups of low-income taxpayers can be affected quite differently by various aspects of the tax-and-transfer system. In particular, reforms involving tax-free zones do not appear to be well targeted to help those most in need.     

Health, Health Care and Social Welfare

This paper reviews the conceptualisation of social welfare in the health economics literature, and the contribution of health and health care to social welfare.