An Equity-based Redefinition of Underemployment and Unemployment and Some Measurements

An attempt is made in this article to redefine underemployment and unemployment without making reference to an excess supply of labor or any causal mechanism of unemployment. Instead, underemployment and unemployment are defined in terms of equity which draws upon the individual's preferences. A specific proposal is that underemployment be defined by the presence of contribution inequity relative to at least half the persons employed in a field that the underemployed person might prefer to move into. Empirically, most recent survey data on preferences for contingent and other nontraditional employment are used to illustrate the application of the concept. The major finding is that nearly 10 million Americans in the nontraditional workforce are underemployed.     

发展中国家就业保护法规研究——国外文献述评与启示

就业保护法规可以保护劳动者就业权益,避免发展中国家在经济发展过程中拉大贫富差距,延缓经济发展速度。但是过于严格的就业保护法规会导致人力资源市场僵化,对经济产生不利的影响。寻找人力资源市场安全性与灵活性的平衡点是发展中国家在就业保护立法过程中的难点,也是理论界研究的热点。文章对国外学术界关于发展中国家就业保护法规的研究进行了详细梳理,从其发展脉络、研究方法、研究思路等方面进行了评述。在此基础上,文章对发展中国家就业保护法规未来的研究重点进行了展望,并指出我国有必要借鉴发展中国家就业保护法规研究的经验,使其在我国人力资源市场的发展中发挥积极作用。     

Manufacturer–reseller e-business arrangements: The impact of inequity on relationship performance and the moderating role of dependence

Manufacturer–reseller e-business arrangements are changing the nature of channel relationships. When manufacturers supply e-business tools to their resellers, resellers may perceive that the benefits of technology are not shared equitably. This research explores this issue by examining two technology based antecedents of perceived inequity from the reseller perspective. We also examine the impact of perceived inequity on relationship performance, and the moderating role of reseller dependence on the proposed inequity–performance link. The results of the empirical test involving a sample of 224 resellers suggest that perceived inequity negatively impacts relationship performance, while reseller dependence plays a moderating role. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed.     

中国居民医疗支出不公平性分析

基于2002年大样本家计调查资料,本文以家庭为单位分析了家庭收入与医疗支出的关系。就中国整体而言,收入相关的居民医疗支出集中指数为48%,而可支配收入的基尼系数是45%,这表明医疗支出具有累退倾向。对其进行分解分析,结果表明这种不公平性根源在于中国城市与农村居民医疗支出严重失衡,城市居民的平均医疗支出几乎是农村的6倍,换句话说,医疗支出方面的公共资金大都集中于发达的城市医疗部门。在中国农村内部和城市内部也存在医疗支出不公平性问题,这种层次的不公平性大多可以归结为中国的东部、中部和西部在平均医疗支出水平上的差异。因此,可以说居民医疗支出的不公平主要是由于地域上的差异造成的。众所周知,中国公共卫生投资缺乏公平性,如果中国政府有意改变这种情况,那么在区域之间重新分配国家补贴就势在必行。在公共卫生预算不变的情况下,应该采取措施引导医疗补贴流向农村地区,特别是西部地区,而流向中国城市地区,特别是东部城市地区的补贴应该减少。     

Exploring public transport equity between separate disadvantaged cohorts: a case study in Perth,Australia

This paper explores the equity distribution of public transport for three separate disadvantaged cohorts including elderly residents, low-income households and no-car households for Perth, Western Australia. It also undertakes a city-wide equity analysis of Perth and compares this with a published analysis for Melbourne. Overall the public transport distribution of the three socially disadvantaged groups was identified to be less equitable when compared to the population as a whole. The elderly had the most inequitable distribution of population relative to other cohorts. Perth’s population exhibits a 0.52 Gini coefficient suggesting a relatively unequal spatial distribution of services to the population. However, this is much better than Melbourne (at 0.68). Results imply that 70% of Perth’s population have only 33% of services supplied, whilst in Melbourne this figure was 19%. Policy implications and areas for future research in this field were identified.     

农户收入差距微观原因分析:山西的经验证据

本文基于山西农村876户的微观数据集，使用非参数回归对影响农户收入差距的原因加以分析，经验研究的结果发现：1．教育体现出的人力资本是拉大农户收入差距的主要原因：2．物质资本对于减小农户收入的差距有显著影响，土地对于农户收入差距没有显著影响；3．相比较低收入组农户，中等收入农户教育回报高出4．08％，高收入农户教育回报高出6．28％，相反，物质资本回报上，则是中等收入组和高收入组农户分别比低收入组要低5．8％和9．9％。     

Information acquisition in the ultimatum game: An experimental study

We experimentally investigate if free information disadvantages a player relative to when information is unavailable. We study an Ultimatum game where the Proposer, before making an offer, can obtain free information about the Responder's minimum acceptable offer. Theoretically, the Proposer should obtain the information and play a best reply to the Responder's minimum acceptable offer. Thus the Responder should get the largest share of the surplus. We find that an increasing number of Proposers become informed over time. Moreover, the proportion of Proposers who use the information to maximize money earnings increases over time. The majority of information-acquiring Proposers, however, refuse to offer more than one-half and play a best reply only to Responders who accept offers of one-half or less. This, together with a substantial proportion of Proposers who choose to remain uninformed, means that the availability of free information backfires for Proposers only by a little. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C70, D63, D80     

农户收入差距的微观基础:物质资本还是人力资本?

本文基于中国8个省份、1320个农户、跨度15年的微观面板数据,使用非参数回归方法对影响农户收入差距的原因加以分析,利用广义差分方法去除农户异质性以后,估计的结果发现:(1)教育和在职培训体现出的人力资本是拉大农户收入差距的主要原因;(2)物质资本,包括土地,对于农户收入的差距没有显著影响;(3)在不同的收入组别上,人力资本的回报都显著高于物质资本的回报。     

WELFARE AS EQUITY EQUIVALENTS

Equity (or, its counterpart, inequity) plays a fundamental role in the evaluation of social welfare in different dimensions. In this paper, we revisit the concept of inequity – in the sense of unequal distributions – across individuals, time, and states of the world using a unified framework that generalizes the standard expected discounted utilitarianism approach. We propose a general measure of welfare as equity equivalents and a corresponding inequity index. We show that allowing for different attitudes toward inequity across different dimensions covers a scope of possible inequity preferences with different interpretations. We then prove that the order of aggregation across the different dimensions matters for welfare evaluations. Finally, we show that many of the welfare-theoretical approaches recently developed in the literature can be interpreted as special cases of this general framework.