Distress financing of out‐of‐pocket health expenditure in India

In the absence of a universal health insurance mechanism, the increasing burden of out‐of‐pocket (OOP) health expenditure has become a growing concern in India. To cope with the cost of illness, people use either their savings and income, or they have to rely upon distress means of finance such as depletion of household assets, borrowings from banks and moneylenders, and contributions from family and friends. This paper analyses the changes that have taken place in the incidence and covariates of distress financing in India by using data from National Sample Survey Organisation for the years 2004 and 2014. Results indicate that during this period the incidence of distress sources as a means to finance OOP health expenditure has hovered around 50%. Further, the results reveal a significant socioeconomic gradient in the incidence of distress financing. Socioeconomic and health‐related covariates significantly impact the likelihood of distress financing as a means to cope with OOP health expenditure. The results indicate the need for government action to formulate a comprehensive plan through an increase in public spending on health care that will improve the quantity and quality of the public health‐care system and enhance the scope of health insurance in India.     

Investigating Growing Inequality in Mozambique

In this paper, we investigate the long‐term trend of consumption inequality in Mozambique. We show that an imbalanced growth path disproportionally benefited the better‐off and caused increasing inequality, especially in more recent years, curbing the necessary reduction in poverty. Using a regression decomposition technique, our results suggest that this trend was strongly associated with the higher attained education of household heads and with the changes in the structure of the economy (with less workers in the public and subsistence sectors). The trend was, however, mitigated by the tendency for the higher level of attained education and the smaller public sector to become associated with less inequality over time. These results point to the importance of accelerating the expansion of education and improving the productivity of the large subsistence sector to lower inequality in line with the sustainable development goals.     

Austerity,inequality, and private debt overhang

Using panel data of 17 OECD countries for 1980–2011, we find that the distributional consequences of fiscal consolidations depend significantly on the level of private indebtedness. Austerity leads to a strong and persistent increase in income inequality during periods of private debt overhang. In contrast, there are no discernible distributional effects when private debt is low. This result is robust to alternative identifications of fiscal consolidations, to different ways of defining periods of private debt overhang, and to controlling for the state of the business cycle and the level of government debt. We explore different channels through which our findings can be rationalized.     

Downward Wage Rigidity in Europe: A New Flexible Parametric Approach and Empirical Results

Abstract. We suggest a new parametric approach to estimate the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity in ten European countries between 1995 and 2001. The database used throughout is the User Data Base of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The proposed approach is based on the generalized hyperbolic distribution, which allows to model wage change distributions characterized by thick tales, skewness and leptokurtosis. Significant downward nominal wage rigidity is found in all countries under analysis, but the extent varies considerably across countries. Yearly estimates reveal increasing rigidity in Italy, Greece and Portugal, while rigidity is declining in Denmark and Belgium. The results imply that the costs of price stability differ substantially across Europe.     

关于规范国企高管年薪及制订《工资法》的建议

国企高管年薪过高的问题,成为人们对分配不公意见的焦点之一。国企高管的天价年薪,没有法律上的依据。应尽快制订工资法,对全国各行各业的工资进行调整规范。     

Search costs and efficiency: Do unemployed workers search enough?

Many labor market policies affect the marginal benefits and costs of job search. The impact and desirability of such policies depend on the distribution of search costs. In this paper, we provide an equilibrium framework for identifying the distribution of search costs and we apply it to the Dutch labor market. In our model, the wage distribution, job search intensities, and firm entry are simultaneously determined in market equilibrium. Given the distribution of search intensities (which we directly observe), we calibrate the search cost distribution and the flow value of non-market time; these values are then used to derive the socially optimal firm entry rates and distribution of job search intensities. From a social point of view, some unemployed workers search too little due to a hold-up problem, while other unemployed workers search too much due to coordination frictions and rent-seeking behavior. Our results indicate that jointly increasing unemployment benefits and the sanctions for unemployed workers who do not search at all can be welfare-improving.     

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: POLICY AND MEASUREMENT PARADIGMS

Abstract Equality of opportunity is a widely accepted principle of distributive justice and it is the leading idea of most political platforms in several countries. According to this principle, a society might institute policies that secure an equal distribution of the means to reach a valuable outcome among its members. Once the set of opportunities have been equalized, which particular opportunity, the individual chooses from those open to her, is outside the scope of justice. Ex ante inequalities, and only those inequalities, should be eliminated or compensated for by public intervention. The recent literature on the opportunity egalitarianism often merges these questions introducing two different economic issues. On one side the design of a public policy intended to implement the equality of opportunity view and on the other side the problem of measuring the degree of opportunity inequality in a society. We describe the basic setting and assumptions of some different approaches derived by Roemer’s algorithm for public policy and then we discuss some theoretical and empirical studies to separate and test alternative paradigms on the measurement of inequality of opportunity. Accordingly, an extended critique on the causality issue on policies and measurements is taken into account.     

试论低端劳动力工资形成机制的变革及其经济效应

自2004年“民工荒”暴发后，农民工工资结束了长期的停滞状态，进入了一个快速的上升通道。工资水平的上涨是由人口因素、周期因素、政策因素、结构因素等多因素导致的。随着农民工工资形成机制从传统的生存工资法则转向保留工资约束下的市场议价型工资法则，中国经济将迎来工资快速上涨的新时期。收入分配格局的变动为中国迎来库兹涅茨倒U曲线的拐点性转变提供了新契机，为缩小收入分配差异过大提供了新的可能性，这将促进中国经济增长模式由外需驱动型向内需驱动型、由投资驱动型向消费驱动型的加速转变。     

INEQUALITY AND HAPPINESS

In recent years there has been an accumulation of empirical evidence suggesting that individuals dislike inequality. The literature has built upon estimating the degree of this dislike as well as its causes. The use of self‐reported measures of satisfaction or well‐being as a proxy for utility has been one of the empirical strategies used to this end. In this survey, we review the papers that estimate or examine the relationship between inequality and self‐reported happiness to conclude that inequality correlates negatively with happiness in Western societies. Some of the surveyed papers identify particular sources of heterogeneity on preferences over inequality. The evidence for non‐Western societies is more mixed and less reliable. Notwithstanding that, trust in the institutions seems to play an important role in shaping the relationship between income inequality and subjective well‐being. We conclude with suggestions for further research.     

Jobs with different wage determination mechanisms, social efficiency and unemployment

The purpose of this paper is to construct a theoretical framework for the labor market, which is composed of a variety of jobs with different wage determination mechanisms. We identify an equilibrium in which some firms post a wage and others bargain with workers. This paper shows that the proportion of firms adopting wage bargaining in a decentralized equilibrium is below the socially optimal level. We identify policies to increase this proportion and to improve social efficiency. Furthermore, we examine the impact of those policies on unemployment. The results of this study will determine the direction of employment policy on the labor market with various employment styles.