INTERRELATIONAL INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN BRAZIL

We extend Miyazawa and Masegi's original idea of disaggregated interrelational income multipliers with regard to three aspects. First, we examine the effect of system closure on the inter‐income‐group matrix. Second, we formally include inter‐household transactions, or the informal economy, into Miyazawa's calculus. Third, we extend the interrelational multiplier to environmental factors. These extensions are applied to the Brazilian economy of 1995. Multiplier matrices excluding and including the informal economy are presented and interpreted, and the redistributive process of transfer payments is traced through consecutive spending rounds for various scenarios. Finally, these redistributive processes are enumerated in terms of transport fuel and electricity use. Our results indicate that, because of the distribution of ownership of productive capital, the income formation process is heavily skewed toward the highest incomes. Whether the existing process and potential redistributive policies alleviate environmental pressure depends on the factors as well as the population segment appraised.     

Entrepreneurship,College, and Credit: The Golden Triangle

We develop a model to evaluate the aggregate impact of college finance in an environment with entrepreneurship. The calibrated model captures the stylized fact that entrepreneurs with college are more common and more profitable in the United States. The calibration indicates this is mainly because higher labor earnings allow college‐educated agents to ameliorate credit constraints if and when they eventually become entrepreneurs. Changes in financing constraints on entrepreneurs can thus affect college attendance, and changes in financing constraints on college can affect entrepreneurship rates as well.     

Gender Sorting at the Application Interface

We document gender sorting of candidates into gender‐typed jobs at the point of initial application to a company. At this step of the hiring process, the firm has implemented a policy whereby organizational screeners’ discretion has been eliminated such that there is no opportunity for contact between hiring agents and applicants. Thus, the job choices studied here offer unique insight as they are uncontaminated by screeners’ steering of candidates toward gender‐typed jobs. Even in the absence of steering, we find clear patterns of gendered job choices that line up with gender stereotypes of job roles. Moreover, these gendered patterns recur both within individuals and within race groups. Comparing our findings to the pattern of job sorting in the external local labor market, we find that supply‐side factors do not fully account for the levels job sex segregation observed in the open labor market. Although probably not the entire story, we show clear evidence that supply‐side sorting processes are important factors contributing to job sex segregation.     

Regional Bipolarization: The Case of the European Union

This study examines the degree of bipolarization of regional per capita income distribution in the European Union between 1977 and 1999. The results obtained reveal a decrease in regional bipolarization in the European context over the study period as a consequence of various factors working in opposite directions. Likewise, the analysis carried out shows that the national component is the main factor explaining regional bipolarization in the European Union, while the geographical location and the productive structure in 1977 seems to have less relevance. Cette étude s’intéresse au degré de bipolarisation de la répartition régionale des revenus par tête dans l’union européenne entre 1977 et 1999. Les résultats révèlent une réduction de la bipolarisation régionale dans le contexte européen pendant la période couverte, du fait de plusieurs facteurs opérant dans des directions opposées. De même, l’analyse effectuée montre que la composante nationale est le facteur principal d’explication d’une bipolarisation régionale dans l’union européenne, alors que le site géographique et la structure de production en 1977 ont, semble‐t‐il, peu d’importance.     

ETHNIC ENCLAVES AND LABOR MARKETS: AN ANALYSIS OF IMMIGRANT OUTCOMES IN CALIFORNIA

The goal of this article is to examine how immigrant enclaves influence labor market outcomes. We examine the effect of ethnic concentrations on earnings in the state of California. Individual-level wage equations that control for several observable human capital and demographic characteristics are estimated. In addition, we introduce a measure that captures an ethnic group's proportion of the metropolitan area population. In general, we find that any potentially positive enclave effects are likely to be offset by negative labor market competition effects. In particular, most enclave effects become insignificant after controlling for metro area–specific effects . ( JEL J61, J31)     

INFLATION AND STABILIZATION IN YUGOSLAVIA

This paper examines the main causes of the acceleration of inflation in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and Yugoslavia's last attempt at stabilization in 1990. Yugoslav inflation shares common elements with inflation in other highly indebted countries despite appearances otherwise. Like these other countries, Yugoslavia failed to make internal adjustments to match a large transfer to resources abroad, resulting in a large internal redistribution to real resources through inflation. However, in Yugoslavia these internal conditions were not transparent. Instead of an open fiscal deficit, complex interactions took place among enterprises, banks, and the central bank, involving the central bank's absorption and servicing of a large stock of foreign exchange liabilities.
Failure to correct hidden losses in the economy was the main reason that various stabilization attempts failed during the 1980s. The 1990 program was the first to recognize the existence of those hidden losses and the need for a fiscal correction. The program succeeded in eliminating the central bank's own deficit and was initially successful infighting inflation, but pressures to finance enterprises and avoid a liquidity crisis in the financial system resulted in a relaxation of monetary policy and a revival of inflation. Seen from this angle, the Yugoslav program of 1990 resembles other heterodox programs that had initial success in reducing inflation but later faltered because of an insufficient fiscal adjustment.     

The Role of Money in Monetary Policy at the Lower Bound

In light of the current low-interest-rate environment, we reconsider the merits of strict money growth targeting (MGT) relative to conventional inflation targeting (IT) and to price level targeting (PLT). We evaluate these policies in terms of social welfare through the lens of a New Keynesian model and accounting for a zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. Although MGT makes monetary policy vulnerable to money demand shocks, MGT contributes to achieving price level stationarity and significantly reduces the incidence and severity of the ZLB relative to both IT and PLT. Furthermore, MGT lessens the need for fiscal expansions to supplement monetary policy in fighting recessions.