贸易自由化对我国地区收入不平等的影响:来自中国的经验证据

文章基于协整的VAR模型从实证的角度研究了我国地区收入不平等与贸易自由化之间的长期均衡和短期动态关系。研究发现：（1）地区收入不平等、贸易自由化与经济增长之间存在长期均衡关系,贸易自由化和经济增长对于关注参数而言是弱外生变量;（2）贸易自由化在长期内减缓了我国地区收入不平等程度,但在短期内却导致了我国地区收入不平等程度的上升;（3）经济增长长期内趋于提高了我国地区收入不平等程度,但短期的影响方向不确定;（4）地区收入不平等是一个随机游走过程,不是一个含有结构突变的趋势平稳过程。     

Structural Changes and Regional Income Inequality in Indonesia: A Bidimensional Decomposition Analysis*

Using the bidimensional decomposition method of a population‐weighted coefficient of variation, this paper analyzes the changes in the determinants of interprovincial income inequality associated with structural changes in Indonesia from 1983 to 2004. The method unifies two inequality decompositions by regional groups and gross regional product components (industrial sectors) and, therefore, enables us to assess the contributions of gross regional product components to within‐region and between‐region inequalities, as well as to overall inequality. As the share of mining has decreased, the spatial distribution of manufacturing has played a more important role in the inequality of Sumatra and Kalimantan, while the primacy of Jakarta, with strong urbanization economies, facilitated by globalization and trade and financial liberalization, has determined much of the Java–Bali region's inequality and, therefore, overall inequality in Indonesia.     

Inequality of opportunity in China: Evidence from pseudo panel data

We construct a pseudo panel sample from the China General Social Survey to study the inequality of opportunity in China. The pseudo panel enables us to control for cohort-specific heterogeneities when estimating the Mincer equation, and the results show that individual circumstances play a prominent role in determining income advantage. Counterfactual analysis further reveals the importance of cohort-level circumstances: individual circumstances account for less than 10% of the observed income inequality, whereas equalizing both the individual circumstances and the cohort fixed effects reduces income inequality by 30%. Among the individual circumstances we examine, gender and paternal characteristics contribute more to income inequality than does hukou of birth. Subsample analysis shows that China's western provinces exhibit the highest inequality of opportunity and that the inequality of opportunity among younger cohorts is smaller than that among older cohorts.     

Political Control and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Chinese Cities

This paper explores the consequence of political control on intra-city economic inequality. Utilizing the unique political institution with mass cadre transfers and household survey data from 81 Chinese cities in 2010, 2012, and 2014, we find that cities with a “local” leader enjoy an almost 6% reduction in expenditure inequality, and the gap is especially narrowed in the lower income families. The reduction is attributed to larger amount of targeted transfers to low-income households. This paper is among the first to empirically support the argument supporting local residence duration for office holding in public sectors, and also contributes to understanding the political economy of social welfare programs as well as campaigns in inequality reduction.     

Expenditure Inequality in Indonesia, 2008–2010: A Spatial Decomposition Analysis and the Role of Education

Based on the 2008–2010 Susenas panel data, this study examines expenditure inequality from spatial perspectives in Indonesia, using three decomposition methods: (i) a conventional Theil index decomposition; (ii) an alternative Theil index decomposition proposed by Elbers et al. (2008); and (iii) the Blinder?Oaxaca decomposition. Our results show that overall inequality in per capita expenditure increases between 2008 and 2010, which coincides with a rising trend in the official Gini coefficient. The contribution of inequality within urban and rural areas to total inequality is larger than that of inequality between urban and rural areas. Looking within urban and rural areas, urban inequality is significantly higher than rural inequality. Java‐Bali in particular records very high urban inequality. Overall, urban inequality increases, urban–rural inequality remains stable, rural inequality decreases, and inequality at the national level increases. Although urban–rural inequality has a relatively low share in overall inequality, the share is not small enough to ignore its impact. Furthermore, when using the alternative decomposition method, the contribution of urban–rural inequality increases substantially. The present study also found that educational differences appear to have played an important role in expenditure inequality within urban areas and between urban and rural areas.     

农户收入差距微观原因分析:山西的经验证据

本文基于山西农村876户的微观数据集,使用非参数回归对影响农户收入差距的原因加以分析,经验研究的结果发现：1．教育体现出的人力资本是拉大农户收入差距的主要原因：2．物质资本对于减小农户收入的差距有显著影响,土地对于农户收入差距没有显著影响;3．相比较低收入组农户,中等收入农户教育回报高出4．08％,高收入农户教育回报高出6．28％,相反,物质资本回报上,则是中等收入组和高收入组农户分别比低收入组要低5．8％和9．9％。     

Gender Inequalities and Economic Efficiency: New Evidence from Cassava‐based Farm Holdings in Rural South‐western Nigeria

Abstract: It is a widely accepted fact that persistent inequality between men and women constrains a society's productivity and ultimately slows its rate of economic growth. The economy pays for this inequality in reduced labour productivity today and diminished national output tomorrow. Motivated by this, the study aim is to assess the possibilities of enhancing productivity gains by improving the efficiency of small‐scale agriculture through gender‐responsive intra‐household allocation of resources in south‐western Nigeria. The study adopts a stochastic parametric decomposition method which yields efficiency measures that are not distorted by statistical noise to estimate the efficiency level of resource allocation by small‐scale cassava producers. The results indicate that average overall productive efficiency in the sample was 75.78 per cent, implying that small‐scale cassava farmers in the sample could reduce total variable cost by 24.22 per cent if they reduce labour, fertilizer, land and capital applications to levels observed in the changing input mix (technical efficiency) and then obtain optimal input mix for the given input prices and technology (allocative efficiency). The average technical efficiency and allocative efficiency indexes for the sample were 82.2 per cent and 92.2 per cent respectively. Also, evidence from empirical analysis of data from the male respondents showed that the average economic, technical and allocative efficiency indexes were 88.06 per cent, 89.34 per cent and 78.67 per cent respectively while the same computed for the female sample were 94.9 per cent, 74.85 per cent and 71.03 per cent respectively. Labour was the most limiting factor in cassava production suggesting that the technologies that enhance the productivity of labour are likely to achieve significant positive effects on cassava production. The paper shares the notion that producers' control over the means of production and impact of development are related and has influence on the economic efficiency and growth of society. Again, technical inefficiency constituted a more serious problem than allocative inefficiency, thus most cost savings will accrue to improvement in technical efficiency.     

Economic Growth and Income Inequality: Evidence from Dynamic Panel Investigation

This paper empirically investigates the effect of income inequality on economic growth using extended panel data covering a broad range of developing and developed countries. We use system generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques in a dynamic panel analysis, which alleviates the possible positive bias in difference GMM due to the persistence of lagged dependent variables as instruments. We find strong evidence of a negative effect on growth from income inequality, which contradicts the findings of Forbes [2000, September. A reassessment of the relationship between inequality and growth, American Economic Review, 90(4), pp. 869–887] and Li and Zou [1998, October. Income inequality is not harmful for growth: Theory and evidence, Review of Development Economics, 2(3), pp. 318–34]. Further analyses using combined Gini coefficients show that the difference can be overall attributed to the problem of omitted control variables and the differences in how the variations in inequality across countries are reflected. We also find that the negative effects of inequality on economic growth can be of great significance when using a sample of less developed countries or more recent inequality data set.     

收入分配与中国居民消费——理论和基于中国的实证研究

本文研究了城乡收入差距扩大对中国居民消费需求的影响.基于生命周期框架的理论研究表明,收入水平越高,居民平均消费倾向和边际消费倾向越低;收入差距越大,居民消费需求越低.文章使用1978—2008年我国28个省、市、自治区的面板数据对理论模型进行了实证检验.结果显示,收入水平提高10000元,居民平均消费倾向下降25.6%,边际消费倾向下降7%;城乡收入差距扩大1单位,居民消费率下降6.5个百分点.数值模拟结果表明,城乡收入差距扩大导致居民消费率在2000—2008年间下降了3.42个百分点,解释了这一期间居民消费率下降的30.8%     

Global Outsourcing and Wage Inequality in Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from South Korea

A substantial number of studies have suggested that global outsourcing can induce wage inequality. As Feenstra and Hanson [(1996a) Foreign investment, outsourcing, and relative wage, in: R. C. Feestra, G. M. Hanson, and D. A. Irwin (Eds.) Political Economy of Trade Policy: Essays in Honor of Jagdish Bhagwati (Cambridge: The MIT Press), pp. 89–127] argued, global outsourcing is comparable to skill-biased technological change in that global outsourcing is more likely to increase the wage of skilled workers rather than their unskilled counterparts. We examine the effects of outsourcing on wage of skilled and unskilled workers in Korea's manufacturing sector with a focus on the dissimilar effects of outsourcing to developed countries (DCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) on relative wage. The results of system and difference GMM estimation based on manufacturing data from 1992 to 2006 indicate that outsourcing to DCs and LDCs have opposite (and significant) effects on relative wage, that is, outsourcing to DCs (LDCs) decreases the wage of skilled (unskilled) workers.     

Racial Inequality and Segregation Measures: Some Evidence from the 2000 Census

How much of the observed segregation between black and white Americans can be attributed to income disparities between the two groups? We adopt an approach to the decomposition of segregation measures that combines the method of indirect standardization with the idea that some degree of segregation is the outcome of purely random processes. Using the dissimilarity index as a measure of segregation and data on race and income from US metropolitan areas for 2000, we find that the role played by racial income inequality in accounting for segregation is modest but varies significantly across cities.     

外包与工资差距——基于工业行业数据的经验研究

本文首先检验了国际外包对我国熟练劳动力与非熟练劳动力工资差距的影响.计量结果表明,与斯托尔帕-萨缪尔逊定理所揭示的相反,外包贸易降低了我国相对丰裕的非熟练劳动力的相对工资.微电子设备的使用也加大了对熟练劳动力的需求,进一步加大熟练劳动力与非熟练劳动力的工资差距.为了检查是否是因为贸易形态的变化所导致的结果,我们进一步检...     

Inequality of opportunity and household education expenditures: Evidence from panel data in China

This paper offers one of the first pieces of empirical evidence on the impact of inequality of opportunity on household education investment by using the panel data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in three waves (2010, 2012 and 2014). Our result suggests that inequality of opportunity has a negative effect on household education expenditures. This result is robust to a series of robustness checks. Furthermore, for relatively disadvantaged households (household heads with less education, income, or rural hukou status), inequality of opportunity has a larger negative effect on their education expenditures. Policy suggestions to lower inequality of opportunity may include reducing labor market discrimination based on gender and hukou status, balancing education resources to create more equal educational opportunities, and offering children education subsidies in low-income families.     

Intergenerational Transfers and Asset Inequality in Japan: Empirical Evidence from New Survey Data

This paper quantitatively examines the impact of intergenerational transfers on asset inequality among Japanese households. We estimate an intergenerational asset transfer function with various control variables, using a unique micro dataset taken from a survey conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute, Cabinet Office. Employing three different models, a Tobit model, an interval regression model and an ordered probit model, to ensure that our results are independent of the specific econometric approach used, we investigate whether asset transfers received are correlated with households’ financial strength. We find that higher income households are likely to receive larger asset transfers. However, the contribution of intergenerational transfers to asset inequality appears to be small.