Prices and Regional Variation in Welfare

One would expect regional differences in prices to influence conclusions concerning levels and distributions of well-being. Although there is anecdotal evidence of significant price dispersion across regions, there is no governmental source of data that measures differences in price levels. In this paper I integrate estimates of regional prices with expenditure data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys to assess the influence of price differences on living standards in the United States. While prices have little effect on inequality, estimates of poverty and the standard of living change substantially with the inclusion of regional price variation.     

Precautionary Demand for Education, Inequality, and Technological Progress

This paper offers an explanation for the evolution of wage inequality within and between industries and education groups over the past several decades. The model is based on the disproportionate depreciation of technology-specific skills versus general skills due to technological progress, which occurs randomly across sectors. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that increasing randomness is the primary source of inequality growth within uneducated workers, whereas inequality growth within educated workers is determined more by changes in the composition and return to ability. Increasing randomness generates a precautionary demand for education, which we show empirically to be significant.     

区间时变时滞线性系统稳定性准则的改进

研究了区间时变时滞线性系统的稳定性问题,基于Lyapunov泛函方法,使用新的处理技术估计Lyapunov泛函导数的上界,以线性矩阵不等式形式给出了系统稳定性准则的改进结果。所给稳定性准则比已有结果具有更低的保守性,数值实例表明了结果的有效性。     

Getting the Smaller Picture: Small‐Area Analysis of Public Expenditure Incidence and Deprivation in Three English Cities

This paper examines public expenditure incidence at small‐area level in cities. The motivations for such research are briefly reviewed. The article reports on an attempt at measuring public expenditure across the majority of programmes down to the level of Census wards and the actual results obtained for three urban local authorities in England. The relationship between spending, income and deprivation is examined overall and for particular spending programmes, using a number of approaches including regression‐based expenditure models. The conclusions suggest that spending is indeed targetted on poorer areas but raise questions about both the strength of this relationship and how best to measure deprivation and the need to spend.     

How better targeting of social spending affects social delivery in South Africa

Social spending has become a major tool of targeting resources to South Africa's poor. The poor now get considerably more than their population share of social spending, but the underlying distribution of income is so skewed that overall post-fiscal inequality has not improved much. Concentration ratios and curves show considerable shifts in social spending incidence in the period 1995 to 2006. However, the efficiency of that spending is low, resulting in limited social outcomes and consequently also limited gains to the poor from better targeting. This paper therefore calls for the South African policy discussion to shift to why the ever-increasing fiscal inputs and improved targeting of those inputs have not produced the desired social outcomes.     

How do income and education affect health inequality: evidence from four developing countries

Using household survey data from four countries ? Albania, Nepal, Tajikistan and Tanzania ? this article calculates income-related inequality in health care utilization. We measure health disparity separately for generally and chronically ill individuals by constructing two models: one for the probability of a visit to a physician and another for the number of visits. Following model-based measurements, we decompose inequality into two major parts: one accounted for by identity-related factors and another by socioeconomic and other factors such as education, geography and distance to a clinic. We propose a new method to quantify the effect of changes in income and education on health disparity. One of our important findings suggests that health disparity is pro-rich in all our sample countries. The pro-rich disparity is prevalent among generally ill as well as chronically ill patients, in both visit probability and visit frequency models. Health inequality seems primarily driven by income differences followed by nonidentity factors. Further, the principle of equal treatment for equal need is not fulfilled in any of our countries. Among policy implications, increasing average income and education in a way that also reduces disparity in income and education, respectively, will substantially shrink inequality in health care utilization.     

Labour mobility and wage inequality in the presence of endogenous foreign investment

This paper examines the impact of labour mobility and increased competition on skilled–unskilled wage inequality and foreign investment. Unlike the existing literature this paper considers a model where foreign investment is endogenously determined. The paper shows that in the shortrun, inflow of either skilled or unskilled labour has no effect on wage inequality but increased competition increases wage inequality. Inflow of either type of labour increases foreign investment but the impact of increased competition on foreign investment cannot be unambiguously determined. Inflow of skilled labour increases wage inequality in the longrun and its effect on foreign investment is positive. Increased competition in the longrun increases wage inequality, foreign investment and welfare.