The distributional impact of public services when needs differ

Despite a broad consensus on the need to take into account the value of public services in distributional analysis, there is little reliable evidence on how inclusion of such non-cash income actually affects poverty and inequality estimates. In particular, the equivalence scales applied to cash income are not necessarily appropriate when including non-cash income, because the receipt of public services is likely to be associated with particular needs. In this paper, we propose a theory-based framework designed to provide a coherent evaluation of the distributional impact of local public services. The valuation of public services, identification of target groups, allocation of expenditures to target groups, and adjustment for differences in needs are derived from a model of local government spending behaviour. Using Norwegian data from municipal accounts and administrative registers we find that the inclusion of non-cash income reduces income inequality by about 15% and poverty rates by almost one-third. However, adjusting for differences in needs for public services across population subgroups offsets about half the inequality reduction and some of the poverty decrease.     

Non-cooperative exploitation of multi-cohort fisheries—The role of gear selectivity in the North-East Arctic cod fishery

North-East Arctic cod is shared by Russia and Norway. Taking its multi-cohort structure into account, how would optimal management look like? How would non-cooperative exploitation limit the obtainable profits? To which extent could the strategic situation explain today’s over-harvesting? Simulation of a detailed bio-economic model reveals that the mesh size should be significantly increased, resulting not only in a doubling of economic gains, but also in a biologically healthier age-structure of the stock. The Nash equilibrium is close to the current regime. Even when effort is fixed to its optimal level, the non-cooperative choice of gear selectivity leads to a large dissipation of rents.     

Taxation and Market Power

We analyze the incidence and welfare effects of unit sales tax increases in experimental monopoly and Bertrand markets. We find, in line with economic theory, that firms with no market power are able to shift a high share of the tax burden to consumers, independent of whether buyers are automated or human players. In monopoly markets, a monopolist bears a large share of the burden of a tax increase. With human buyers, however, this share is smaller than with automated buyers, as the presence of human buyers constrains the pricing behaviour of a monopolist. Several control treatments corroborate this finding.     

On the power of indicators: how the choice of fuel poverty indicator affects the identification of the target population

In light of the creation of the EU Energy Poverty Observatory (EPOV) in January 2018 and the increase in debates on how fuel poverty is measured, we propose a critical analysis of fuel poverty indicators and demonstrate that choosing a given indicator is central to the identification of the fuel-poorpopulation.

First, we conducted an inter-indicator analysis to show how profiles of fuel-poor households vary depending on the indicator selected. We designed a multidimensional approach based on a multiple correspondence analysis and a hierarchical and partitioning clustering analysis to study characteristics of fuel-poor households. We highlight the difficulty of identifying a fuel-poor ‘typical profile’ and show that the composition of the population depends on the choice of the indicator.

Second, we applied an intra-indicator analysis using two objective expenditure-based indicators with thresholds. In particular, we conducted a sensitivity analysis based on a logit model including variables describing household and dwelling characteristics. We show that the profiles of fuel-poor households as well as the drivers of fuel poverty vary considerably with the chosen threshold level.Given these findings, we stress the need to review how we currently rely on conventional fuel poverty indicators to identify target groups and give some recommendations.     

Towns (and villages): definitions and implications in a historical setting

The measurement of urbanization rates and other uses of statistical information, for example the use of historical town growth to measure long-term economic growth, are usually based on an ad hoc population threshold to define and practically classify settlements as towns. The method, however, trades off accuracy and precision for convenience and simplicity. This paper proposes a new threshold that uses the town size distribution together with agricultural data to derive an appropriate cutoff value. The relevance of agricultural income is integrated into the classification scheme through the differential effect of local agricultural endowments on settlement size. The threshold is chosen such that the size of towns above the cutoff is statistically not influenced by local agricultural endowments, while the size of villages, which is below the threshold, is indeed shaped by them. This new approach is practically demonstrated with an application to the urban system of the nineteenth century in the German region of Saxony. This setting is used to investigate the relevance of a different classification for the development of urbanization over time and Gibrat’s law. The results demonstrate that the underlying classification scheme matters strongly for the conclusions drawn from historical urban data. They also indicate that the use of a common population threshold for a comparative analysis or temporal comparisons in a historical context increases the misclassifications of settlements.     

论乡村旅游的"围城"效应及可持续发展

在乡村旅游如火如荼进行的同时，也面临着诸多尴尬，陷入了其发展的“围城”之中。只有实施低成本运营的制度化、产业链本地化、经营者共生化、投资途径复合化、乡村旅游生态化，才能促进乡村旅游的可持续发展。     

论信息处理在个人发展中的作用

当今社会可谓是一个信息社会,信息爆炸以及信息污染这两种现象就是对这一时代的有力诠释。生活在信息环绕之中的个体,如何处理信息,对于自身发展具有重要的影响作用。本文就信息处理的重要性、信息处理的差异性以及如何有效地进行信息处理以推动个人发展三个方面进行了简要论述。     

食品物流行业安全管理探讨

对我国食品物流行业的发展现状进行了详细分析,深入剖析了目前的安全管理漏洞,并在此基础上结合实际提出了食品安全物流的保障措施。     

怎样有效解决审计纠纷?--ADR法及其在审计诉决策中的运用

ADR是什么? 当今世界,注册会计师职业深受"诉讼爆炸"的困扰,法律责任特别威胁着注册会计师职业及其从业人员.当发生针对事务所的诉讼纠纷时,合伙人面临着潜在的个人责任,即使事务所赢得了诉讼,其主要花费和一些隐性费用也是很昂贵的.     

Repeated interaction in standard setting

Standardization may allow the owners of standard‐essential patents to charge higher royalties than would have been negotiated ex ante. In practice, however, standard‐setting efforts are often characterized by repeated interaction and complementarities among technologies. These features give firms that contribute technology to standards both the ability and the incentive to avoid excessive royalties by threatening to exclude other technology contributors from future rounds of standardization if they charge royalties exceeding ‘fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory’ (FRAND) levels. We show that such an outcome can be sustained as a subgame‐perfect equilibrium of a repeated standard‐setting game and examine how the decision‐making rules of standard‐setting organizations (SSOs) affect the sustainability of FRAND royalties. Our analysis provides a novel justification for super‐majority requirements and other rules frequently adopted by SSOs.