The Uncertainty of Academic Rent and Income Inequality: The OECD Panel Evidence

The article presents an alternative view on the education—income inequality relationship, which calls into question the neoclassical claim that education increases labor productivity and hence contributes to a higher output, wage and consequently more even income distribution. In the context of public policies, education needs to be seen not only as a factor of income mobility, but also as a “positional good,” which benefits graduates at the expense of non-graduates. Education generates “academic rent,” by which we mean uneven remuneration of workers based on academic signs of distinctions that do not necessarily reflect differences in productivity. Using the robust panel model on a sample of OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) countries from 1980 to 2015, we show that investments in human capital lead to lower inequality, but overinvestments tends to increase income inequality, which may be related to academic rent. In discussing this result, we consider that uncertainty of academic rent under the condition of a rapid transformation of the workplace caused by the fourth industrial revolution.     

Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management

This paper integrates two conceptual frameworks, utility maximization and institutional theory, to analyze voluntary corporate environmental management. The utility maximization or economic approach centers on motivations to decrease cost, increase revenue and improve manager utility. Institutional theory emphasizes how external pressures from market and non‐market constituents shape the firm's environmental efforts. We view the two frameworks as complementary and postulate a model that includes both types of influences. Survey data from six major industries consisting of a diverse set of facilities are used to estimate the effects of economic and institutional factors on a facility's use of environmental practices and pollution‐prevention activities. Our results support the hypothesized model, and show that cost barriers, management attitudes toward environmental stewardship, company ownership and external institutional forces, including competitiveness, investor and regulatory pressures, all affect a facility's environmental practices and pollution prevention activities. Findings suggest that a multifaceted policy strategy is needed to advance corporate environmental management across diverse firms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Income Polarization of the U.S. Working Class: An Institutionalist View

We provide an institutional insight into the trend of income polarization within the U.S. working class. In contrast to the previous industrial waves, the current and ongoing industrial revolution is characterized by the replacement of “creative destruction” with jobless growth. Instead of replacing the lost jobs with new ones, new disruptive technologies eliminate more jobs in traditional labor and capital-intensive sectors than create jobs in new idea-intensive sectors. By examining the relationship between the income share of the bottom 50 percent, the middle 40 percent, and the top 10 percent and technological progress, we obtain robust econometric results. According to our results, the income polarization among U.S. workers can be associated with the shift of R&D activities from the public to the corporate sector. The concentration of innovations by corporate capital limits the power of society to reduce inequality and to provide greater social stability through “the incredible productivity” of technological progress.     

Voluntary association membership of outdoor recreationists: An exploratory study

Abstract

Research on the political activity of outdoor recreationists has focused primarily on their associational affiliations and concern for the environment. This article reviews literature on theories of collective behavior, recreation motivations, and environmental concern. The study considers outdoor recreation as a social movement and investigates relationships between incentives for voluntary membership in environmental and outdoor recreation associations, motivations for participation in outdoor recreation activities, and environmental concern. Members of associations were found to be significantly different than nonmembers on several variables including value for outdoor recreation, incentives for association membership, intellectual motivations for outdoor recreation, environmental concern, education level, and age. Results suggest that association efforts to obtain instrumental benefits, or public goods that accrue to all of society, are a primary incentive for outdoor recreationists to join voluntary associations. A common thread of intellectual pursuit distinguished members from nonmembers, suggesting that intellectual benefits may help define the relationship between outdoor recreation and associational affiliation behaviors.     

The crucial epoch: Essential knowledge for living in a world in transformation

Mankind is entering the most crucial epoch in its history. The global economic and socio-technical industrial system in place since World War II is coming to a close. What takes its place is up to mankind to decide. Drawing on current work in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, cybernetics and systems science theory, the author identifies crucial bifurcation epochs in human history where new biological species and human societies have evolved from the old, replacing themselves with better adapted successors. Although scientists speak of bifurcation as essentially random, human societies are able to exercise foresight and take purposeful action. At this critical juncture, as post-industrial civilization comes to an end, this is the choice that humanity is morally bound to exercise.     

CROPLAND DIVERSION (SET-ASIDE) IN THE US AND UK

Lessons from a variety of past and present US cropland diversion programmes are important for evaluating UK set-aside proposals. The structure and operation of current US programmes and the major UK proposals are described. A comparative economic welfare analysis of generic cropland diversion in the US and UK reveals the different types of potential impacts due principally to their different agricultural support programmes. Government cost savings and land rental payments can be misleading benefit and cost indicators for set-aside. Major problems with US programmes include slippage of production control, lack of targeting, inadequate overall efficiency evaluations, and goal conflict. The most appropriate role for cropland diversion may be as a compensatory mechanism to aid the agricultural adjustment process in the face of price restraint, while securing the most valuable non-market conservation and environmental services from idled farm land.     

Productivity and financial support in academic bioscience

Despite widespread awareness that scientific record and grant funding reinforce one another, empirical models of scientific production normally consider laboratory inputs to be exogenous. The present article employs a cross-section of academic bioscientists to examine the mutual relationship between research output and financial support. Information's nonrival character is such that scientific output and funding success cannot be expressed in strictly supply-and-demand terms. We find the typical bioscience laboratory to operate in a range of decreasing returns to scale and to over-invest in laboratory equipment and materials. Publication and funding success strongly reinforce one another, explaining the right-skewed success distributions often observed in science.     

Innovation and Income Inequality in the USA: Ceremonial versus Institutional Changes

Abstract

This article investigates the distributive effects of technological progress in the United States during the last four decades. The result of our econometric analysis reveals that the shift in R&D investment from the public to the private sector was associated with an increase in income share of the richer classes at the expense of the poorer income classes. Taking an institutionalist perspective, these findings can be explained by ceremonial encapsulation of innovation by corporate capital that slows the pace of social progress. In this context, diffusion of innovation may be treated as a progressive institutional change.