How does anti-corruption campaign affect the labour income share in China?

Based on the difference-in-difference (DID) methodology, this paper empirically investigates the impact of the current anti-corruption campaign on the share of labour income in China. Using a firm-level data on Chinese corporations listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2009 to 2015, we find that the campaign contributes to the rise in the labour income share, while there is considerable heterogeneity. The magnitude of the effect depends on firm’s ownership and market power. This paper advances the existing studies examining the nexus between corruption and income distribution from a novel perspective.     

Conflict, Distribution and Population Growth

This paper studies an optimal foraging model where distributive conflicts among foragers emerge from population growth. It investigates distributive rules set to resolve the conflicts. Efficient distributive rules are the ones associated with the most efficient productive decisions. Unequal societies, where the ruling class or King maximizes the surplus, engender the choice of more efficient productive combinations and to a smaller population relative to egalitarian societies.     

How does informal employment impact income inequality?

This study investigates how informal employment impacts total income inequality in urban China. Finite mixture methodology is employed to examine the segments that exist in the informal labour market, and the Theil index (T0) is used to break down total income inequality according to different subsamples. We found that the two-segment model (upper-tier and lower-tier) best describes the structure of the informal labour market in urban China and that the upper-tier segment contributes most to the total income inequality.     

Fighting inflation in Mexico: Theory and evidence

Mexico adopted the inflation targeting strategy in 2002, and this came together with declining inflation. According to the economic authorities, this also brought about lower pass-through of exchange rate changes into inflation. The objective of this article is to test the main hypotheses of Mexico’s prize-stabilization strategy. As a preliminary step, we show evidence whereby the interest rate has not the impact on demand assumed in the conventional view. We then estimate econometric models, which show first of all that inflation depends essentially on the evolution of labor and input costs. Then we demonstrate that higher employment and higher wages associated with higher output do not necessarily entail higher labor costs because productivity also increases when output rises. In the final section, we set forth our main conclusions, which cast doubts on some crucial aspects of the inflation targeting strategy, and propose a different interpretation about why inflation declined in this country.     

Recent decline in wage inequality and formalization of the labour market in Argentina

Labour market conditions improved during the 2000s in Latin America, a process that included a reduction in the magnitude of informal employment. A decline of wage inequality was another feature of this period. Both dynamics were particularly intense in Argentina. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role played by the process of formalization of the labour market that occurred in Argentina during that period on the reduction of income inequality, while additionally taking into account other factors that might have also contributed to such dynamics of income inequality. The method employed is a decomposition proposed by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux, which allows extending the Oaxaca-Blinder approach to decompose some distributive statistics of income between a ‘composition effect’ and a ‘returns effect’. The study concludes that the process of increasing labour market formalization had an equalizing effect over the period, a finding that had not been emphasized in previous studies.     

城乡居民收入差距的动态演变:1988～2002年

中国城乡居民收入差距已经引起广泛关注。文章以住户调查数据为基础,利用泰尔指数分解、G.Fields分解、Blinder分解、分位回归分解等多种方法讨论了1988年、1995年和2002年“城乡”因素本身对城乡居民收入差距的贡献。这些分解结果表明我国的城乡差距较显著并在不断扩大;而且城乡差距更不利于农村中的低收入人群。     

经济增长与收入分配相关性研究重点转移带来的政策启示

从有关经济增长与收入分配相关性的研究内容入手,分析经济增长和收入分配研究从功能性分配向规模化分配的理论转变过程,提出了针对此种演变带给我们的政策启示:在经济增长过程中,应同时关注收入差距问题。     

收入不平等与经济增长：移动的库兹涅茨曲线*——新时期收入分配改革的思路与意义

准确判断收入不平等对经济增长的影响,对于客观评价中国各个阶段的收入分配制度改革尤为重要。本文在统一增长理论的框架下引入收入不平等因素,构建了一个人口数量、不平等和经济增长同时内生的理论模型,并利用CGSS数据构造收入不平等指标,使用中国省际非平衡面板数据进行经验检验。研究发现：收入不平等与经济增长之间呈现倒U型关系。更重要的是,随着经济发展水平的提高,倒U型曲线将逐渐向左移动,即最优的收入不平等程度随着经济发展水平的提高而逐渐降低。这一发现意味着改革开放以来,中国各个时期的收入分配制度改革均是在特定历史条件下的最优选择。本文的结论具有深刻的政策含义：为了提高经济增长率,需要进一步巩固“脱贫攻坚”成果,逐渐加大收入分配调节力度,使收入分配制度改革紧跟经济发展的步伐,根据经济发展水平不断缩小收入不平等程度。     

Distributional Consequences of Competitive Structural Change

This paper examines the distributional consequences of a shift toward a more capital intensive technique in an economy inhabited by infinitely-lived consumers and with a complete set of competitive markets. We show that income inequality goes through a form of Kuznets curve: inequality jumps when the capital intensive technique is introduced, monotically rises during the structural change, and abruptly falls when the adoption of the new technique ends. The total effect of the structural change is an increase in income inequality.     

What are the distributional implications of halving poverty in South Africa when growth alone is not enough?

The country risk indicator, as measured by the JP Morgan's EMBI or grades of rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's (S&P's) or Moody's, does not seem to truly reflect the fundamentals of an economy. Countries that pursue sound economic policies are frequently placed on the same level as countries with a populist orientation or with a recent history of default or debt restructuring. Such circumstance generates a feeling of unease with regard to these ratings. The objective of this article is to investigate whether these indicators truly reflect market fundamentals or whether some sort of prejudice, or intolerance towards certain countries, can be identified. We use the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to analyse the differences in country risk, measured as by EMBI+, for a group of emerging markets. This decomposition allows us to separate the ‘justified’ (differences in fundamentals) from the ‘unjustified’ differences (same fundamental differently evaluated).     

Wealth,Capital and the Theory of Distribution: Some Implications for Piketty’s Analysis

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) has been spectacularly successful. One reason for this is that while it often challenges received views and supports a non-apologetic interpretation of capitalism, at the same time it relies on mainstream economics. This theoretical framework, however, is not always conducive to consistency and interpretative accuracy. This paper points out some of the book’s analytical weaknesses and shows that some empirical evidence, a clearer distinction between wealth and capital, and a different theoretical perspective, could lead to questioning some of the book’s claims. In particular, it argues that the increase in the wealth-to-output ratio (but not the capital-to-output ratio) cannot explain the observed changes in income shares. It also contends that non-mainstream perspectives on income distribution and growth suggest that changes in income distribution are due more to policy and power relations than to the factors Piketty identifies.     

Earnings inequality and unemployment in South Africa

Unemployment and earnings inequality have moved together remarkably closely in South Africa in recent years. This article explores the relationship between unemployment and earnings inequality in South Africa, investigating the extent to which changes in unemployment can account for changes in earnings inequality. Static and dynamic decompositions of earnings inequality by employment status reveal the centrality of unemployment in accounting for the both level and trend of earnings inequality. The distribution of employment in the formal and informal sectors is found to be of lesser importance in explaining earnings inequality, as is wage dispersion within each of these categories. The findings point to the central importance of reducing unemployment in South Africa if the extremely high levels of inequality are to be reduced.