A Different Perspective on the Evolution of UK Income Inequality

This paper scrutinizes the conventional wisdom about trends in UK income inequality and also places contemporary inequality in a much longer historical perspective. We combine household survey and income tax data to provide better coverage of all income ranges from the bottom to the very top (and make our estimates available to other researchers). We make a case for studying distributions of income between tax units (i.e. not assuming the full income sharing that goes with the use of the household as the unit of analysis) for reasons of principle as well as data harmonization. We present evidence that income inequality in the UK is as least as high today as it was just before the start of World War 2.     

Strategic take-back programs when consumers have heterogeneous environmental preferences

We look at the strategic introduction of take-back programs (TBPs) which offer consumers a discount on their next purchase (reward) when they drop off previous purchases. In a Hotelling duopoly, consumers are heterogeneous not only in terms of their location on the Hotelling line but also in terms of their recycling preferences. Firms introduce TBPs to obtain a market share advantage (reward effect) and/or to recover the intrinsic value of the recycled units (recycling effect); their choice of the optimal reward balances these two effects: for instance, a firm might be willing to introduce a TBP, even if this means losing money on each recycled unit, in order to prevent the competitor from gaining a too large market share advantage. Comparing the level of TBP uptake at the market equilibrium to the one that maximizes social welfare, we show that a lower or higher TBP uptake can be socially desirable, depending, among other, on the weight that is given to the environmental benefits of TBPs. Several extended producer responsibility policies are discussed in terms of their potential to encourage TBP uptake and their overall impact on social welfare.     

Analyzing tactical control strategies for aircraft arrivals at an airport using a queuing model

This paper proposes to analyze control strategies for arrival air traffic at an airport using a classical queuing model. The parameters of our model are estimated by means of a data-driven analysis of two years of radar tracks and flight plans for arrival flights at Tokyo International Airport from 2016 to 2017. Our results show that increasing the capacity with one or two more aircraft in the airspace up to 60 NM around the airport significantly mitigates arrival delays, even when assuming future, increased arrival traffic volumes. The outcomes of this study provide insights into the effectiveness of arrival control strategies and are seen as a means to recommend scenarios to be further analyzed with human-in-the-loop simulations.     

Extended Models for Quantal Response Data

There is much current interest in trying to improve the fit of the classical logit and probit models for quantal response data. This is done through transforming the dose scale and/or embedding a classical model in a richer parametric family. This paper provides an historical review of the development of this work, and attempts to make practical recommendations. Much of the work extends directly to the case of logistic regression.     

Hedges or safe havens—revisit the role of gold and USD against stock: a multivariate extended skew-t copula approach

Our paper concerns the question of whether there exist hedge assets during extreme market conditions, which has become increasingly important since the recent financial crisis. This paper develops a novel extended skew-t copula model to examine the effectiveness of gold and US dollar (USD) as hedge or safe haven asset against stock prices for seven developed markets over the 2000–2013 period. Our results indicate the existence of skewness and heavy/thin tails in the distributions of all three types of assets in most of the developed markets, lending support to the employment of flexible distributions to evaluate the tail dependences among assets. We find that USD is preferred to gold as a hedge asset during normal market conditions, while both assets can serve as safe haven assets for most countries when stock markets crash. Our simultaneous analysis of the three assets advises against a joint hedge strategy of gold and USD due to the high tail dependence between them during extreme market conditions. This result highlights the importance of simultaneous modelling of multiple assets in financial risk analysis.     

A tale of two Ginis in the US, 1921–2012

Following a methodology by Jantzen and Volpert (2012), we use IRS Adjusted Gross Income data for the US (1921–2012) to estimate two Gini indices representing inequality at the bottom and the top of the income distribution, and to calculate the overall Gini as a function of the parameters underlying the two indices. A steady increase in the overall Gini since the Second World War actually hides two different periods of distributional changes. First, the increase in inequality from the mid 1940s to the late 1970s is driven by rising inequality at the bottom of the income distribution that more than offsets a decrease in inequality at the top. The implication is that middle-income earners gained relative to high-incomes, and especially relative to low-income earners. Second, the rise in the Gini after 1981 is driven by rising inequality at the top. Third, top-driven inequality follows a U-shaped trajectory consistent with Piketty and Saez (2003, 2006). Fourth, the welfare effects of the different distributional changes behind increasing inequality can be evaluated in light of the Lorenz-dominance criterion by Atkinson (1970): we argue that the rise in inequality since 1981 is much more likely to be associated with a social welfare loss net of compensating growth.     

我国的收入分配发展趋势是否为倒U形

阐述了国内外学者对库兹涅茨"倒U假说"所持的观点和认识。用我国的实际数据对库兹涅茨"倒U假说"进行了检验,认为我国的收入分配基本上不符合倒U形状,不能靠经济增长来解决收入差距的拉大问题;收入现状的改善需要政府政策的支持。     

产业集群定量测度方法轨迹分析

根据国内外产业集群定量测度理论的发展轨迹,依次对产业集中度、产业关联度、产业集聚指数进行了追溯。     

各地区居民收入基尼系数计算及其非参数计量模型分析

本文利用非等分组基尼系数公式,首次较为完整地计算出全国21个省、市以及自治区的1995~2004年城镇居民、农村居民和城乡居民基尼系数。在这一基础上,利用非参数计量经济模型中的分布密度函数估计方法,分析了1995~2004年各地区城镇、农村和城乡居民基尼系数变化特征。以居民平均收入水平与城乡居民收入平均基尼系数对各地区进行判别分析,发现以收入水平与分配公平程度为标准的判定基本上同我国东中西三大地区的划分一致。     

基于二元GARCH方法对我国国债市场的分割性检验

我国的国债市场目前尚处于分割状态,本文从市场之间信息流动的角度出发,构建二元GARCH模型对我国两个国债交易市场之间的波动溢出效应进行研究,发现银行间市场与交易所市场存在稳定的一阶矩长期关系及二阶矩的双向信息流动;并构造时变的条件相关系数对市场一体化程度进行分析,发现总体上两市场一体化程度较差,在检验期末的时段,相关系数开始呈现上升趋势。这一结果更多地归因于两市场跨市交易品种较少、投资者结构的差异以及现行的转托管制度。