robust international comparisons of distributions of disposable income and regional public goods the paper provides robust normative comparisons of 12 oecd countries based on their distributions of disposable income and access to two regional public goods infant mortality and pupil teacher ratios at public schools comparisons are performed using two and three dimensional dominance criteria that coincide with the unanimity of utilitarian judgments taken over specific classes of utility functions the criteria succeed in ranking conclusively about 30 of all possible comparisons in the two dimensional case compared with 67 for one dimensional income based comparisons and 6 for three dimensional ones introducing local public goods seems to worsen the relative standing of anglo saxon countries

fiscal federalism and interstate risk sharing empirical evidence from germany abstract using an approach developed by asdrubali et al quarterly journal of economics 111 1996 1081 the paper estimates the extent of smoothing of state specific income shocks to west german states from 1970 to 1997 by federal fiscal institutions the results show that despite the existence of substantial interregional transfer mechanisms the share of shocks to state income absorbed by fiscal flows is roughly at the same level as in the us

the relationship between energy consumption structure economic structure and energy intensity in china this paper investigates the long run equilibrium relationships temporal dynamic relationships and causal relationships between energy consumption structure economic structure and energy intensity in china time series variables over the periods from 1980 to 2006 are employed in empirical tests cointegration tests suggest that these three variables tend to move together in the long run in addition granger causality tests indicate that there is a unidirectional causality running from energy intensity to economic structure but not vice versa impulse response analysis provides reasonable evidences that one shock of the three variables will cause the periods of destabilized that followed however the impact of the energy consumption structure shock on energy intensity and the impact of the economic structure shock on energy consumption structure seem to be rather marginal the findings have significant implications from the point of view of energy conservation and economic development in order to decrease energy intensity chinese government must continue to reduce the proportion of coal in energy consumption increase the utilization efficiency of coal and promote the upgrade of economic structure furthermore a full analysis of factors that may relate to energy intensity e g energy consumption structure economic structure should be conducted before making energy policies

measuring lifetime poverty abstract this paper presents an axiomatic framework for measuring lifetime poverty over multiple periods for an individual we argue that lifetime poverty is influenced by both the snapshot poverty of each period and the poverty level of the permanent lifetime consumption it is also influenced by how poverty spells are distributed over the lifetime we axiomatically characterize classes of lifetime poverty indices and derive dominance conditions of poverty orderings for both individual and societal lifetime poverty measurements

marginal commodity tax reforms a survey as noted 30 years ago by martin feldstein optimal taxes may be useless for practical purposes and emphasis should instead be placed on the possibility of enhancing welfare by reforming existing tax rates in this perspective marginal commodity tax reforms are gaining increasing attention due to political and economic constraints on large reforms of direct or indirect taxation in this paper we summarize the main features and results of the literature on marginal commodity tax reforms pioneered by ahmad and stern further developed by yitzhaki and thirsk and recently reinterpreted by makdissi and wodon we establish new links to other fields of research namely the literature on the use of equivalence scales and on poverty measurement we also critically examine some issues associated with the implementation of marginal tax reforms with special reference to the calculation of welfare weights and revenue effects finally we suggest directions for future research on poverty reducing commodity tax reforms

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

multivariate measures of well being and an analysis of inequality in the michigan data we demonstrate a multidimensional approach for combining several indicators of well being including the traditional money income indicators this methodology avoids the difficult and much criticized task of computing imputed incomes for such indicators as net worth and schooling inequality in the proposed composite measures is computed using relative inequality indexes that permit simple analysis of both the contribution of each welfare indicator and its factor components and within and between components of total inequality when the population is grouped by income levels age gender or any other criteria the analysis is performed on u s data using the michigan survey of income dynamics

energy embodied in the international trade of china an energy input output analysis abstract growing international trade has not only positively affected the people s republic of china s china s economic development but also expanded the exportation of energy embodied in goods during their production this energy flow out will pose risks to china s rational utilization of natural resources as well as environmental protection in this paper we evaluate the energy embodied in goods produced in china during 1992 2005 and use input output structural decomposition analysis to identify five key factors causing the changes of energy embodied in exports direct primary energy efficiency primary energy consumption structure structure of intermediate inputs structure of exports and scale of exports for the three sub periods of 1992 1997 1997 2002 and 2002 2005 results show that china is a net exporter of energy and the energy embodied in exports tends to increase over time the expanding total volume of exports and increasing exports of energy intensive goods tend to enlarge the energy embodied in exports within all three sub periods but these driving forces were offset by a considerable improvement of energy efficiency and changes in primary energy consumption structure from 1992 to 2002 and the effects of structure of intermediate input only in the sub period from 1992 to 1997 from 2002 to 2005 the sharp augmentation of energy embodied in exports was driven by all the five factors our research has practical implications for the chinese economy results of this study suggest that the energy embodied in trade should receive special attentions in energy policies design to limit the energy resource out flow and pollution generation

an analysis of the driving forces of co2 emissions embodied in japan china trade abstract by using the latest china japan input output data sets and the index decomposition analysis ida approach this article analyzes the driving forces of co2 emissions embodied in trade between the two countries during 1990 2000 we found that the growth of trade volume had a large influence on the increase of co2 emissions embodiments in bilateral trade the dramatic decline in carbon intensity of the chinese economy is a primary cause in offsetting co2 emissions exported from china to japan over 1995 2000 we argue that a better understanding of the factors affecting co2 emissions embodied in international trade will assist in seeking more effective climate policies with wider participation in the post kyoto regime

aggregate consumer behaviour and the measurement of inequality this paper presents an approach to inequality measurement based on an econometric model of aggregate consumer behaviour the novel feature of this model is that systems of individual demand functions can be recovered uniquely from the system of aggregate demand functions we present methods for evaluating social welfare based on an explicit social welfare function this social welfare function incorporates measures of individual welfare based on indirect utility functions for all consumer units we develop indexes of inequality based on actual and potential levels of social welfare

trends in the transitory variance of male earnings methods and evidence we estimate the trend in the transitory variance of male earnings in the united states using the michigan panel study of income dynamics from 1970 to 2004 using an error components model and simpler but only approximate methods we find that the transitory variance started to increase in the early 1970s continued to increase through the mid 1980s and then remained at this new higher level through the 1990s and beyond thus the increase mostly occurred about 30 years ago its increase accounts for between 31 and 49 percent of the total rise in cross sectional variance depending on the time period

assessing individual income growth we develop methods for describing distributions of income growth across individuals and for comparing changes in growth distributions over time the methods include graphical devices income growth profiles and dominance conditions and also summary indices together with associated methods of estimation and inference taking an explicitly longitudinal perspective our approach illuminates clearly who are the gainers and the losers and also provides distributionally sensitive assessments ones that allow the income growth for different individuals to be weighted differently our empirical application shows that the pattern of income growth in britain over the period 1992 1996 was less pro poor than that for 1998 2002 and not significantly different from the pattern for 2001 2005

differential mortality and social security this paper studies the normative problem of redistribution between individuals who differ in their lifespans we discuss aspects related to the objective function and argue that aversion to multiperiod inequality should be taken into account then we study the properties of the social optimum both with full information and with asymmetric information we highlight the role of aversion to multiperiod inequality and show that it has substantial consequences on the design of social security schemes in particular we show that for a low resp high aversion to multiperiod inequality a negative resp positive implicit tax rate on continued activity is desirable

sorting it out international trade with heterogeneous workers each worker brings a bundle of skills to the workplace for example quantitative and communication skills since employers must take this bundle as a package deal they choose workers with just the right mix of skills we show that international differences in the distribution of worker skill bundles for example japan s abundance of workers with a modest mix of both quantitative and teamwork skills have important implications for international trade industrial structure and domestic income distribution formally we model two dimensional worker heterogeneity and show that the second moments of the distribution of skills are critical as in the roy model

keeping up with the joneses and optimal diversification abstract peer effects have been shown to affect behavior and can generally lead to investments choices that are mean variance inefficient this paper analyzes optimal diversification with peer effects we show that if individuals have keeping up with the joneses preferences and they take their peer group reference as the market portfolio markowitz s mean variance efficiency analysis and the capm equilibrium are intact this holds for any keeping up preferences as well as heterogeneous combinations of such preferences these results also extend to the merton levy segmented market model

wellbeing inequality and preference heterogeneity standard measures of multidimensional inequality implicitly assume common preferences for all individuals and hence are not sensitive to preference heterogeneity among the members of society in this paper we measure the inequality of the distribution of equivalent incomes which is a preference sensitive multidimensional well being measure to quantify the contribution of preference heterogeneity to well being inequality we use a decomposition method that calculates well being inequality in different counterfactual distributions we focus on four sources of well being inequality the correlation between outcomes and preferences the preference heterogeneity the correlation between the outcome dimensions and the inequality within each of the outcome dimensions we find that preference heterogeneity accounts for a considerable part of overall well being inequality in russia for the period of 1995 to 2005 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

what drives the change in china s energy intensity combining decomposition analysis and econometric analysis at the provincial level abstract we employ decomposition analysis and econometric analysis to investigate the driving forces behind china s changing energy intensity using a provincial level panel data set for the period from 1995 to 2009 the decomposition analysis indicates that a all of the provinces except for a few experienced efficiency improvement while around three fourths of the provinces economics became more energy intensive or remained unchanged b consequently the efficiency improvement accounts for more than 90 of china s energy intensity change as opposed to the economic structural change the econometric analysis shows that the rising income plays a significant role in the reduction of energy intensity while the effect of energy price is relatively limited the result may reflect the urgency of deregulating the price and establishing a market oriented pricing system in china s energy sector the implementation of the energy intensity reduction policies in the eleventh five year plan fyp has helped reverse the increasing trend of energy intensity since 2002 although the chinese government intended to change the industry led economic growth pattern it seems that most of the policy effects flow through the efficiency improvement as opposed to the economic structure adjustment more fundamental changes to the economic structure are needed to achieve more sustainable progress in energy intensity reduction

is decoupling economic growth from fuel consumption possible in developing countries a comparison of china and india abstract a better understanding the coupling decoupling of economic growth from energy demand in china and india can serve both countries and other developing countries to achieve the goal of gaining higher economic growth with less energy demand to demonstrate the relationship between coupling decoupling economy and energy in china and india better this work has made following contributions i analyzes the decoupling elasticity between economic growth and energy consumption by using the tapio model ii explores the five key effects labor input investment energy structure energy intensity technology level of decoupling elasticity by combining the cobb douglas c d function and log mean divisia index lmdi method and iii evaluates the decoupling efforts by applying decoupling efforts model in china and india between 1990 and 2015 the decoupling elasticity results show china s decoupling elasticity curve is in an inverted u shaped trend and the decoupling elastic value is concentrated between 0 and 0 8 in most years showing a weak decoupling state furthermore the decoupling state is strong decoupling during 2014 2015 indicating china has initially achieved the decoupling of economy and energy consumption while india s decoupling elasticity presents irregular fluctuations indicating that india s decoupling status is not very satisfactory the decomposition results uncover that major effects of decoupling in china and india are similar i e the investment effect is the biggest driver which contributed to a cumulative increasing impact in energy consumption in china and india by 3017 10 million tonnes oil equivalent and 675 18 million tonnes oil equivalent respectively whereas the energy intensity effect is the greatest inhibiting factor which contributed to a cumulative reduction in energy consumption in china and india by 1437 81 million tonnes oil equivalent and 139 21 million tonnes oil equivalent the decoupling efforts results show decoupling effort in china is better than that in india improving energy efficiency is the leading contributor to china s decoupling efforts while advancing technology is the major contributor to india s decoupling effort

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

channels of interstate risk sharing united states 1963 1990 we develop a framework for quantifying the amount of risk sharing among states in the united states and construct data that allow us to decompose the cross sectional variance in gross state product into several components which we refer to as levels of smoothing we find that 39 percent of shocks to gross state product are smoothed by capital markets 13 percent are smoothed by the federal government and 23 percent are smoothed by credit markets the remaining 25 percent are not smoothed we also decompose the federal government smoothing into subcategories taxes transfers and grants to states

regional income redistribution and risk sharing how does italy compare in europe abstract this paper investigates income redistribution and risk sharing and the underlying public policy in italy a country marked by stark regional economic contrasts unlike previous works this study also assesses the roles of public consumption investment and welfare assistance in kind the findings suggest that italy s fiscal system provides redistribution at 25 35 and risk sharing at 10 15 of gdp with public consumption playing a large role compared with results in the literature for other countries there appears to be less redistribution and risk sharing through italy s welfare and tax systems because of their different structures

energy intensity and its determinants in china s regional economies abstract this paper contributes to the existing literature as well as policy debates by examining energy intensity and its determinants in china s regional economies the analysis is based on a comprehensive database of china s regional energy balance constructed for this project through its focus on regional china this study extends the existing literature which mainly covers nationwide studies it is found in this paper that energy intensity declined substantially in china the main contributing factor is the improvement in energy efficiency changes in the economic structure have so far affected energy intensity modestly thus there is considerable scope to reduce energy intensity through the structural transformation of the chinese economy in the future

hunger inequality ethics and aid abstractthis article considers the inequality in the cross country distribution of hunger using multiple ethical underpinnings under sovereign equality each nation state receives equal weighting leading to the conclusion that hunger should be concentrated in a few large countries under the democratic ethic individuals receive equal weighting and the global distribution of hungry people is irrelevant inequality aversion deliberately prefers equal levels of hunger across countries these ideals are presented in a general social welfare function and compared to the actual changes in hunger during 1991 2001 the distribution of food aid to reduce both hunger and hunger inequality are considered

comparison of energy intensities in european union countries results of a structural decomposition analysis abstract this work proposes an input output structural decomposition analysis model to identify the sources of the differences in the energetic intensities of the european union countries given an economic structure a determined composition of the final demand and determined direct energy intensities by countries the work studies to what extent these factors explain the difference in aggregate energy intensities that are observed for different european union countries on the basis of this information indicators are constructed by sectors and countries that allow us to identify the role that each sector or country plays as an energy consumer the results show that the aggregate total energy differences in europe are strongly influenced by the direct energy intensity effect and by the demand effect without the different economic structures of the countries being an important factor in the explanation of these differences the metallurgical and manufacturing products sectors are identified as the most intensive in the aggregate energy intensity

the dual approach for measuring multidimensional deprivation theory and empirical evidence abstract this paper is concerned with the problem of ranking and quantifying the extent of deprivation in multidimensional distributions of dichotomous deprivation variables to this end we introduce a family of measures of deprivation justified on the basis of dual social evaluation functions two alternative criteria of second degree deprivation count distribution dominance are shown to divide the proposed family of deprivation measures into two separate subfamilies which can be justified by a combination of correlation increasing and count neutral rearrangements based on eu silc data we show that application of the proposed measures might lead to conclusions that differ from those attained by standard cut off measures and that results based on cut off measures are more sensitive to the choice of specific measure

ethically robust comparisons of bidimensional distributions with an ordinal attribute abstract we provide foundations for robust normative evaluation of distributions of two attributes one of which is cardinally measurable and transferable between individuals and the other is ordinal and non transferable the result that we establish takes the form of an analogue to the standard hardy littlewood polya theorem for distributions of one cardinal attribute more specifically we identify the transformations of the distributions which guarantee that social welfare increases according to utilitarian unanimity provided that the utility function is concave in the cardinal attribute and that its marginal utility with respect to the same attribute is non increasing in the ordinal attribute we establish that this unanimity ranking of the distributions is equivalent to the ordered poverty gap quasi ordering introduced by bourguignon 12 finally we show that if one distribution dominates another according to the ordered poverty gap criterion then the former can be derived from the latter by means of an appropriate and finite sequence of such transformations

empirical measurement of horizontal inequity abstract horizontal inequity is the unequal treatment of equals a crucial problem arising when measuring its extent is how should differential treatment which has some equity justification be distinguished from that which does not the literature to date has suggested that genuine equals can be identified and thence the problem solved by adjusting incomes prior to calculations using equivalence scales the paper argues that there are some good reasons for considering an alternative approach labelled partial symmetry in this the emphasis is on measuring horizontal inequity within each group of households with the same equity relevant characteristics rather than on adjusting incomes and then using the same measure for all households in the population the approaches are compared theoritically with reference to summary indices based on the generalised entropy family and to the conditions required to make partial orderings of different redistributions exploratory empirical work suggests there has been a substantial reduction in the horizontal inequity of u k direct taxes between 1976 and 1981 whichever approach is used the sources of the inequity observed are analysed in detail

relative price changes and inequality in the size distribution of various components of income this article uses a comprehensive model of economic inequality to examine the impact of relative price changes on inequality in the marginal distributions of various income components in which the marginal distributions are derived from a multidimensional joint distribution the multidimensional joint distribution function is assumed to be a member of the pearson type vi family that is it is assumed to be a beta distribution of the second kind the multidimensional joint distribution is so called because it is a joint distribution of components of income and expenditures on various commodity groups gini measures of inequality are devised from the marginal distributions of the various income components the inequality measures are shown to depend on the parameters of the multidimensional joint distribution it is then shown that the parameters of the multidimensional joint distribution depend on the relative prices of various commodity groups and several other specified exogenous variables thus knowle

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

fiscal flows and financial markets to what extent do they provide risk sharing within sweden andersson l fiscal flows and financial markets to what extent do they provide risk sharing within sweden regional studies the objective of this paper is to analyse the amount of risk sharing that takes place between regions in sweden it is found that the capital market is the largest source of risk sharing of an exogenous change in gross regional product in sweden still roughly 20 of a change in regional output is smoothed among the regions through the fiscal system there is also some evidence that there are regional differences in the sense that regions located in the south rely more on the capital market as a source of insurance against shocks in output while the tax and transfer systems provide a larger extent of risk sharing for regions located in the north andersson l flux fiscaux et marches financiers dans quelle mesure assurent ils le partage de risques en suede regional studies l objet de cette communication est d analyser l importance du partage de risques entre regions suedoises

labor supply decisions human capital attributes and inequality in the size distribution of earnings in the u s 1952 81 this paper analyzes the impact of human capital and labor force variables and macroeconomic growth measures on inequality in the size distribution of earnings for the united states our technique utilizes a beta distribution of the second kind to approximate the distribution of earnings we derive a measure of inequality that depends solely on the parameters of the beta distribution and that links human capital labor force and macroeconomic variables to changes in the parameters of the beta distribution we then relate the changing parameters of the beta distribution to changes in the degree of inequality in the marginal distribution of earnings

energy consumption and economic growth a causality analysis for greece abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between aggregated and disaggregated levels of energy consumption and economic growth for greece for the period 1960 2006 through the application of a later development in the methodology of time series proposed by toda and yamamoto 1995 at aggregated levels of energy consumption empirical findings suggest the presence of a uni directional causal relationship running from total energy consumption to real gdp at disaggregated levels empirical evidence suggests that there is a bi directional causal relationship between industrial and residential energy consumption to real gdp but this is not the case for the transport energy consumption with causal relationship being identified in neither direction the importance of these findings lies on their policy implications and their adoption on structural policies affecting energy consumption in greece suggesting that in order to address energy import dependence and environmental concerns without hindering economic growth emphasis should be put on the demand side and energy efficiency improvements

why did china s energy intensity increase during 1998 2006 decomposition and policy analysis abstract despite the fact that china s energy intensity has continuously decreased during the 1980s and mostly 1990s the decreasing trend has reversed since 1998 and the past few years have witnessed rapid increase in china s energy intensity we firstly conduct an index decomposition analysis to identify the key forces behind the increase it is found that 1 the high energy demand in industrial sectors is mainly attributed to expansion of production scale especially in energy intensive industries 2 energy saving mainly comes from efficiency improvement with energy intensive sectors making the largest contribution and 3 a heavier industrial structure also contributes to the increase this study also makes the first attempt to bridge the quantitative decomposition analysis with qualitative policy analyses and fill the gap between decomposition results and policy relevance in previous work we argue that 1 energy efficiency improvement in energy intensive sectors is mainly due to the industrial policies that have been implemented in the past few years 2 low energy prices have directly contributed to high industrial energy consumption and indirectly to the heavy industrial structure we provide policy suggestions in the end

china s energy consumption under the global economic crisis decomposition and sectoral analysis abstract it is now widely recognized that there is a strong relationship between energy consumption and economic growth most countries energy demands declined during the economic depression of 2008 2009 when a worldwide economic crisis occurred as an export oriented economy china suffered a serious exports decline in the course of the crisis however it was found that energy consumption continued to increase against such a background this paper aims to assess and explain the factors causing the growth of energy consumption in china first we will explain the impact of domestic final use and international trade on energy consumption by using decomposition analysis second embodied energy and its variation across sectors are quantified to identify the key sectors contributing to the growth lastly the policy implications for long term energy conservation are discussed the results show that the decline in exports was one of the driving forces for energy consumption reduction in the crisis but that the growth of domestic demand in manufacturing and construction largely stimulated by economic stimulus plans had the opposite effect on energy consumption international trade contributed to decreasing energy consumption of china during and after the crisis because the structure of exports and imports changed in this period

price index dispersion and utilitarian social evaluation the living standard indicator in utilitarian social evaluation functions usef is the ratio of a nominal living standard and a price index we show that under weak association of price indices and nominal living standards and usual concavity conditions on utility functions utilitarian social welfare increases with price index dispersion when the aggregate price level is superior to the arithmetic mean of price indices and diminishes when it is inferior to the harmonic mean

constant increasing and decreasing risk aversion with many commodities the arrow 1971 pratt 1964 theory of risk aversion has achieved important successes in the study of economic responses to risk this theory applies to a special class of cases in which the von neumann morgenstern expected utility hypothesis is used to explain these responses under this hypothesis individuals who maximize the expected utility of different utility functions will in general make different choices in the face of uncertainty for the purpose of predicting which of two different utility functions will lead to locally more risk averse economic behaviour the essential feature of these functions is their associated arrow pratt absolute risk aversion measures in fact the local comparisons can be extended to global comparisons if the arrow pratt absolute measures are uniformly comparable the arrow pratt measure of absolute risk aversion and a closely related measure of relative risk aversion also play crucial roles in the investigation of changes induced by wealth increases in the risk taking behaviour of a single expected utility maximizing individual this study has resulted in a satisfactory theory of increasing decreasing and constant absolute and relative risk aversion the special cases to which the arrow pratt theory is directly applicable are those in which the utility functions in question are functions of a single variable e g wealth unfortunately the models required to explain many economic decisions employ a version of the expected utility hypothesis in which the argument of the utility function is a multidimensional vector one example arises in the study of the consumption savings decision another occurs in the analysis of the combined consumption savings portfolio decision a final example is obtained in the investigation of demand for goods of uncertain quality the papers of kihlstrom mirman 1974 and diamond stiglitz 1974 have suggested a partial generalization of the arrow pratt theory of absolute risk aversion this

health and income a robust comparison of canada and the us abstract this paper uses sequential stochastic dominance procedures to compare the joint distribution of health and income across space and time it is the first application of which we are aware of methods to compare multidimensional distributions of income and health using procedures that are robust to aggregation techniques the paper s approach is more general than comparisons of health gradients and does not require the estimation of health equivalent incomes we illustrate the approach by contrasting canada and the us using comparable data canada dominates the us over the bottom part of the bi dimensional distribution of health and income though not generally over the uni dimensional distributions of health or income the paper also finds that welfare for both canadians and americans has not unambiguously improved during the last decade over the joint distribution of income and health in spite of the fact that the uni dimensional distributions of income have clearly improved during that period

an overview of energy consumption of the globalized world economy abstract for the globalized world economy with intensive international trade an overview of energy consumption is presented by an embodied energy analysis to track both direct and indirect energy uses based on a systems input output simulation in 2004 the total amounts of energy embodied in household consumption government consumption and investment are 7749 874 and 2009 mtoe million tons of oil equivalent respectively the united states is shown as the world s biggest embodied energy importer 683 mtoe and embodied energy surplus receiver 290 mtoe in contrast to china as the biggest exporter 662 mtoe and deficit receiver 274 mtoe energy embodied in consumption per capita varies from 0 05 uganda to 19 54 toe rest of north america based on a forecast for 2005 2035 china is to replace the united states as the world s leading embodied energy consumer in 2027 when its per capita energy consumption will be one quarter of that of the united states

fiscal flows in the united states and canada lessons for monetary union in europe regional flows of federal taxes and transfers within the united states and canada are used to analyze long term fiscal flows the redistributive element and short term responses to regional business cycles the stabilization element in the united states long run flows amount to 22 cents in the dollar while the stabilization effect is 31 cents in the dollar in canada the redistributive effect is larger 39 cents and the stabilization effect smaller 17 cents federal flows appears to depend on the institutional structure of the country concerned however in both countries the redistributive element is considerably larger than the amounts involved in the ec structural funds program as for stabilization national fiscal policies in the ec appear to have been as effective as federal governments in the united states and canada in cushioning shocks to incomes

german s oil footprint an input output and structural decomposition analysis abstract it is generally thought that the country with net exports in goods is also a net exporter of energy embodied in goods in this work we report a paradox phenomenon which shows that germany was a net goods exporter but also a net importer of embodied oil based on the multi region input output model and structural decomposition analysis this paper comprehensively analyzed the changing trend and main driving factors of oil footprints in german trade the results showed that germany s embodied oil exports increased by 35 06 with the expansion of trade scale and germany s net imports of embodied oil fell by 45 49 during the study period although the focus of embodied oil transfer in trade was eu countries the embodied oil trade volume between germany and developing countries especially china grew rapidly from sectoral level heavy manufacturing and transport industry dominated more than 70 of the germany s embodied oil trade the decomposition analysis showed that the scale effect of final demand was the main factor that contributed to the growth of oil footprints in germany s international trade which offset the inhibition of oil consumption intensity the effect of production structure played an important role in the embodied oil trade and the low oil intensive industrial structure was the main reason why germany was a net importer of embodied oil

multivariate decision making under risk aversion abstract this paper develops new multivariate stochastic dominance rules for the class of all risk averse decision makers in which the separation of preferences over commodity bundles from attitudes toward risk is made explicit

vulnerability to multidimensional poverty peru 1998 2002 summary we approach multidimensional poverty from the viewpoint of a forward looking risk averse household we consider the fear to face hardship in any well being dimension as a relevant form of deprivation since peace of mind is also a component of overall well being we are thus concerned with vulnerability to multidimensional poverty as we discuss how such vulnerability should be measured we find that attention must be paid not only to how well being dimensions correlate over a given population but also to how they correlate over the states of the world data from peru illustrate

measuring structural change and energy use decomposition of the us economy from 1997 to 2002 abstract the steadily increasing focus on energy production and consumption has led to growing research attention to patterns of energy use within economies of particular interest has been comparing the driving forces of increasing efficiency and economic structural change input output analysis ioa and decomposition analysis have become critical tools for performing such analyses this study analyzes aggregate energy use in the united states in 1997 and 2002 to discover the causes of changing energy usage and flows results show that rising population and household consumption acted to drive up energy demand but this driving force was offset by considerable structural change within the economy particularly related to a quickly increasing trade deficit in manufacturing goods thus while total energy intensity the ratio of energy use to economic output declined by approximately 12 between 1997 and 2002 changes in the structure of the economy explain this drop more than increased energy efficiency the level of aggregation at which decomposition analyses are run was identified as a crucially sensitive parameter for the determination of structural change and future studies should specifically address the amount of detail necessary to adequately measure changes in economic structure

inequality of wellbeing a multidimensional approach an important aspect of multidimensional wellbeing distributions is the correlation between different dimensions we propose two indices for measuring multidimensional inequality derived from two underlying social evaluation functions these functions aggregate both across dimensions and across individuals the social evaluation functions differ only with respect to the sequencing of aggregation aggregating first across dimensions is more attractive since it allows the inequality index to depend on the correlation between dimensions we illustrate both indices and the impact of correlation sensitivity using russian household data between 1995 and 2005 for four dimensions of wellbeing expenditure health schooling and housing quality

redistribution and risk sharing in italy learning from the past abstractredistribution and risk sharing in italy learning from the past regional studies this paper investigates the role of public policies in italy by assessing both the redistribution and the risk sharing functions of interregional net fiscal flows in the long run its comparative approach allows one to contrast results obtained for two periods characterized by diverse regional policy and dynamics of regional convergence although based on a specific example the evidence supports more general conclusions when assessing the regional redistributive and risk sharing power of national fiscal policies many different factors related to the existing policy regime should be accounted for particularly the distribution of government spending between current expenditure and public investment

influence of sewage treatment on china s energy consumption and economy and its performances abstract the sewage treatment industry may affect china s energy saving and economic growth related goals to some degree this study investigated influence of sewage treatment on china s energy consumption and economic growth and its performances from 2008 to 2013 we adopted a set of indicator system based on energy emergy and money to depict these interactions including energy use per unit emission reduction euer cost per unit emission reduction cuer environmental benefit per unit investment ebui ratio of energy consumption from sewage treatment to national total energy consumption rest ratio of cost of sewage treatment to the gross domestic product rcsg structural coordination degree of sewage treatment scds and scale harmony degree of sewage treatment shds here emergy was used to quantify the environmental impact of water pollutants the study results show that energy efficiency of sewage treatment keeps relatively stable the economic cost of sewage treatment increases obviously the environmental performance of sewage treatment investment slightly rises and the sewage treatment has an increasing impact on the energy consumption and economic growth of this country as far as the relationships between different indicators or factors are concerned the structure of china s sewage treatment industry worsens obviously due to rising energy consumption and economic cost meanwhile the relationship between economic cost and energy consumption for sewage treatment domestic water consumption and discharged sewage s impact seriously deteriorated finally some corresponding issues are discussed and the related policy implications are put forward

regional non adjustment and fiscal policy asymmetric shocks regional non adjustment and fiscal policy how will countries handle idiosyncratic macroeconomic shocks under the single currency since the regional adjustment patterns currently prevailing within european currency unions are likely to prevail at the national level under the single currency looking at the ways in which european countries react to internally asymmetric shocks today provides a good preview for the answer to that question in this paper we compare the usa with germany italy and the uk and with canada which is closer to europe than the usa in its labour market and fiscal institutions europe s and to some extent canada s model of regional response differs from that of the usa changes in regional real exchange rates are small in all countries outside of the usa however there is more reliance on interregional transfer payments less on labour migration and the pace of regional adjustment appears to be slower if emu aims at the same degree of economic and social cohesion that its constituent nations enjoy today this suggests that its members may find it hard to resist the eventual extension of existing eu mechanisms of income redistribution a transfer union we propose an alternative strategy based on a relaxed stability pact further strictures against central eu borrowing labour market and fiscal reform and the issuance by individual member states of debt indexed to nominal gdp maurice obstfeld and giovanni peri

input output simulations of energy environment economy interactions in the uk this paper shows how a number of the complex interrelationships between energy environment and economic welfare can be investigated with the aid of a 10 sector input output i o model of the uk with pollution emission coefficients and a european sulphur deposition vector the paper reviews relevant past applications of i o analysis in the energy environment area and describes the endam program and its operation it is used to simulate the effects of a variety of policies and possibilities not only through changes in exogenous variables final demand and income taxes and transfers but also through changes in the structural matrices and their coefficients in each case the full effects direct indirect and income induced can be traced and the changes in comparative static equilibrium values discovered in this way policy issues connected with energy use and environmental impacts employment and economic welfare have been investigated

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

multidimensional welfare distributions empirical application to household panel data from vietnam this article explores the empirical application of theoretical multidimensional welfare distribution analysis techniques to real household welfare distributions the article operationalizes recent conceptual developments in multidimensional distribution theory and assesses their usefulness for the measurement of multidimensional household inequality the results strongly highlight the importance of bringing nonmonetary aspects of household welfare into the forefront of inequality analysis agreement over the various approaches to the measurement of multidimensional inequality entails however nontrivial decisions that may limit the practical usefulness of these measures we suggest that the use of multidimensional inequality ranges and the application of restrictive dominance criteria to multidimensional welfare distributions may open significant scope for further developments in the empirical analysis of multidimensional inequality

twenty years of rising inequality in u s lifetime labour income values in this paper we study the evolution of lifetime labour income inequality by constructing present value life cycle measures that incorporate both earnings and employment risk we find that even though lifetime income inequality is 40 less than earnings inequality the total increase in lifetime income inequality over the past 20 years is the same as earnings inequality while the total increase is the same the pathways there differ with earnings inequality experiencing a steady increase and lifetime income inequality increasing in spurts particularly in the latter half of the 1990s finally we find the changes in lifetime income inequality are primarily driven by changes in earnings mobility and changes in the earnings distribution itself changes in employment risk and the composition of the sample such as the shift toward attaining more education and the ageing population do not play a large role 2004 the review of economics studies limited

dalton improving tax reform when households differ in ability and needs abstract in a previous paper we suggested a method for identifying tax reforms that adhere to dalton s principle of transfers approving a small enough transfer from rich to poor however even the weak requirement from that method namely prescribing a uni dimensional ordinal ranking of households by how deserving they are of a marginal income transfer is con fining here we extend the approach by formulating a two dimensional criterion for a dalton improving tax reform when there is social approval for transfers when other things are equal from the more able to the less able and from less needy households to more needy ones the possibility of applying this extended criterion in practice and a comparison with other criteria is carried out using the example of u k excise taxes

what do normative indices of multidimensional inequality really measure we argue that normative indices of multidimensional inequality do not only measure a distribution s extent of inequity i e the gaps between the better off and the worse off but also its extent of inefficiency i e the non realized mutually beneficial exchanges of goods we provide a decomposition that allows quantifying these two parts of inequality exact formulas of the inequity and inefficiency components are provided for a generic class of social welfare functions the inequity component turns out to be a two stage measure which applies a unidimensional inequality measure to the vector of well being levels we critically discuss two prominent transfer principles viz uniform majorization and correlation increasing majorization in the light of the decomposition a decomposition of inequality in human development illustrates the analysis

has energy conservation been an effective policy for thailand an input output structural decomposition analysis from 1995 to 2010 abstract thailand has depended heavily on imported fossil fuels since the 1990s which hindered the nation s economic development because it created uncertainty in the nation s fuel supply an energy conservation policy was implemented in 1995 to require industries to reduce their energy intensity ei and consumption immediately this study investigates the effectiveness of the policy between 1995 and 2010 using the hybrid input output approach surprisingly ei improvement was observed in only a few sectors such as transportation non metallic paper and textile an embodied energy decomposition analysis revealed that while households were the largest energy consumer in 1995 energy consumption in exports exceeded that of households in 2000 2005 and 2010 in addition structural decomposition analysis revealed the final demand effect was the strongest factor in determining the efficacy of energy conservation whereas the energy efficiency effect was not an effective factor as expected for decreasing energy consumption policy barriers and conflicting economic plans were factors that affected the outcome of these energy policies

subnational fiscal balance interregional redistribution and risk sharing in italy abstractthis paper provides new estimates of redistribution and risk sharing across regional territories accomplished by the italian public sector for the first time subnational governments fisc

inequality and welfare in market economies abstract atkinson 1970 and kolm 1969 have shown how lorenz ranking of distributions of a fixed amount of income or a single commodity may correspond to social welfare rankings lower inequality indicates higher social welfare atkinson and bourguignon 1982 and kolm 1977 offer two ways of extending this result to multi commodity environments we investigate an alternative approach based on the existence of markets and market prices at which agents maximize utility our main result offers a welfare based method of making real national income comparisons which takes into account the distribution of individual welfare

the pareto principle of optimal inequality the pareto principle is often viewed as a mild requirement compatible with a variety of value judgements in particular it is generally thought that it can accommodate different views on the desirable degree of equality we show that this is generally not true in intertemporal models where some uncertainty prevails to do so we formalize the concept of inequality aversion we show that different degrees of inequality aversion are not possible in typical models of time consistent dynamic decision under uncertainty

the possibility of social choice the subject of social choice includes within its capacious frame various problems with the common feature of relating social judgments and group decisions to the views and interests of the individuals who make up the society or the group some challenges and foundational problems faced by social choice theory as a discipline are discussed social choice theory is a subject in which formal and mathematical techniques have been very extensively used voting based procedures are entirely natural for some kinds of social choice problems such as elections referendums or committee decisions they are however altogether unsuitable for many other problems of social choice impossibility results in social choice theory led by the pioneering work of arrow 1951 have often been interpreted as being thoroughly destructive of the possibility of reasoned and democratic social choice including welfare economics that view is argued against

what drive the changes in china s energy consumption and intensity during 12th five year plan period abstract during the 12th five year plan period 2011 2015 the chinese government has released a series of energy conservation plans to launch and deepen the transition in the energy use particularly the dual control of the energy consumption and energy intensity was firstly emphasized this paper intends to explore the targeted and effective energy policy implications through investigating the drivers of changes in energy consumption intensity of china during the 12th five year plan period under the input output framework the embodied energy consumptions intensities by final demand category were estimated at aggregate sector level and the total energy consumption intensity was decomposed using the additive multiplicative structural decomposition analysis among the final demand categories china s energy consumption intensity was mainly contributed by the investment followed by the household consumption according to the sda results china s total energy consumption increased by 28 8 of which the energy intensity effect and the investment effect were the most retardant and accelerator respectively at the same time china s total aggregate energy intensity decreased by 16 0 of which the energy intensity effect and the household consumption effect were the most retardant and accelerator respectively in detail the key sectors with respect to the critical effects were picked out above all policy implications are discussed for achieving the energy goals during the 13th five year plan period and launching the energy revolution during the 14th five year plan period

prioritarian poverty comparisons with cardinal and ordinal attributes the ethical view of prioritarianism holds the following if an extra bundle of attributes is to be allocated to either of two individuals then priority should be given to the worse off among the two we consider multidimensional poverty comparisons with cardinal and ordinal attributes and propose three axioms that operationalize the prioritarian view each priority axiom in combination with a handful of standard properties characterizes a class of poverty measures this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

the effect of increasing exports on industrial energy intensity in china abstract given china s heavy reliance on fuel energy and the dominance of its industrial sector in the economy improving energy efficiency remains one of the practical means for the country to decrease energy intensity and to fulfill its commitment made at the copenhagen climate change conference to achieve a 40 45 percent reduction in co 2 emission intensity by 2020 this study investigates the impact of exports on industrial energy intensity to explore the possibility of reducing energy intensity through greater exports a panel varying coefficient regression model with a dataset of china s 20 industrial sub sectors over 1999 2007 suggests that in general greater exports aggravate energy intensity of the industrial sector and that great divergences exist in the impact of exports on energy intensity across sub sectors a panel threshold model further estimates the thresholds for the major determinants of energy intensity exports input in technological innovations and foreign direct investment fdi intensity given the great differences in specific sub sector characteristics and the changing roles played by different factors across sub sectors there is no general export policy that would work for all sub sectors in reducing sub sector energy intensity instead policies and measures aiming to encourage more efficient use of energy should take into full consideration the characteristics and situations of individual sub sectors

embodied energy use in china s industrial sectors abstract as the world s top energy consumer china is facing a great challenge to solve its energy supply issue in this paper energy use from all industrial sectors in china s economy of 2007 was explored by conducting an extended environmental input output analysis we compare the energy consumption embodied in the final demand for goods and services from 29 sectors with the energy demand required for the actual production process in each sector two different viewpoints for sectoral energy use have been presented energy use is directly allocated to the producer entity and energy use is reallocated to sector s supply chain from consumption perspective our results show that considerable amount of energy use is embodied in the supply chain especially for construction and other service activities sectors which is not detected if energy use is allocated on a production basis when further dividing embodied energy consumption into direct energy consumption and indirect energy consumption total indirect energy consumption is much higher than that of total direct energy consumption accounting for 80 6 of total embodied energy consumption in 2007 our results provide a more holistic picture on sectoral energy consumption and therefore can help decision makers make more appropriate policies

structure and environmental impact of global energy consumption abstract this paper presents information on global energy consumption by fuel type liquid fuels coal natural gas renewables and nuclear and sectors buildings industrial transportation and electricity and environmental impact of global energy consumption sox nox and co2 emissions there is a strong relationship between energy consumption and economic growth the global financial crisis has affected the global economic growth violently the governments have recently adopted some effective measures to fight against the global financial crisis the structure of energy consumption and the conditions of sox nox and co2 emissions affect the global changes acid rain and greenhouse effect today considerable effort is being devoted to reduce co2 emissions because of the kyoto protocol on climate change this publication presents multidisciplinary perspectives on the interrelated topics of energy consumption energy security and energy policy additionally the present study examines the relationship between energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission

the lucky few amidst economic decline distributional change in cote d ivoire as seen through panel data sets 1985 88 this article is an exploratory exercise in using panel data sets to investigate distributional change in cote d ivoire during the second half of the 1980s the panels made it possible to highlight and quantify mobility of the same households across poverty classes over time we found that there were a lucky few who improved their standard of living amid general decline detailed investigations revealed that the lucky few were fairly numerous and the probability of escaping poverty was quite high even for the very poorest these lucky few were widespread regionally although in some socio economic groupings the poor had higher chances of escaping poverty

bp statistical review of world energy 2011 multinational corporation bp is now issuing the 60th statistical review which contains data on world energy production and consumption the influence of renewed economic growth in energy consumption is considered the dynamics of individual energy markets crude oil petroleum natural gas is analyzed the prospects for coal hydro and nuclear power as well as the possibility of using renewable energy sources are investigated

the comparison of multi dimensioned distributions of economic status the literature on inequality measurement has been largely concerned with single dimensioned indicators this paper explores some of the issues which arise when there are several dimensions to inequality and these are not readily reduced to a single index concentrating particularly on the two dimensioned case we make use of results on multi variate stochastic dominance in portfolio theory extending these and applying them to the measurement of inequality the use of the dominance conditions is illustrated by an application to the international distribution of income and life expectancy

driving forces of rapid co2 emissions growth a case of korea abstract this study aims to investigate korea s final demand structure and its impacts on co 2 emissions in order to reduce co 2 emissions and develop environmental policy directions based on the environmentally extended input output model this study adopts a two step approach 1 to estimate the embodied emissions and their intensities for 393 sectors induced by final demand and 2 to calculate the driving factors of emission growth between 2003 and 2011 and then evaluate the result by using structural decomposition analysis sda the findings of this study demonstrate that the impact of composition change in export with less embodied emission intensities tends to offset the increase in co 2 emission by the export scale growth the relatively low residential electricity price has resulted in the rapid growth of household electricity consumption and significantly contributed to emissions growth the result of sda indicates that korea s final demand behavior yielded high carbonization over the same period the findings suggest that korean government should promote exports in industries with less embedded co 2 in order to protect environments in addition emission information of each product and service should be provided for consumers to change their purchase patterns towards contributing to low carbon emissions as active players

intertemporal choice and consumption mobility the theory of intertemporal consumption choice makes sharp predictions about the evolution of the entire distribution of household consumption not just about its conditional mean in the paper we study the empirical transition matrix of consumption using a panel drawn from the bank of italy survey of household income and wealth we estimate the parameters that minimize the distance between the empirical and the theoretical transition matrix of the consumption distribution the transition matrix generated by our estimates matches remarkably well the empirical matrix both in the aggregate and in samples stratified by education our estimates strongly reject the consumption insurance model and suggest that households smooth income shocks to a lesser extent than implied by the permanent income hypothesis jel d52 d91 i30

international welfare comparisons and nonparametric testing of multivariate stochastic dominance this paper outlines a class of statistical procedures that permit testing of a broad range of multidimensional stochastic dominance hypotheses and more generally welfare hypotheses that rely upon multiple stochastic dominance conditions we apply the procedures to data on income and leisure hours for individuals in germany the uk and the usa we find that no country first order stochastically dominates the others in both dimensions for all years of comparison furthermore while in general the usa stochastically dominates germany and the uk with respect to income in most periods germany stochastically dominates with respect to leisure hours finally we find evidence that bivariate poverty which refers for example to the working poor that is those who have little leisure and low income is lower in germany than in either the uk or the usa on the other hand poverty comparisons between the uk and the usa are sensitive to the subpopulation of individuals considered copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

a welfare economics foundation for health inequality measurement the empirical literature on the measurement of health inequalities is vast and rapidly expanding to date however no foundation in welfare economics exists for the proposed measures of health inequality this paper provides such a foundation for commonly used measures like the health concentration index the gini index and the extended concentration index our results indicate that these measures require assumptions that appear restrictive one way forward may be the development of multi dimensional extensions

evaluating the relationships among economic growth energy consumption air emissions and air environmental protection investment in china abstract this paper analyzed the interactions among china s economic growth and its energy consumption air emissions and air environmental protection investment during 2000 2007 conventional energy and emergy are applied to quantify energy consumption and emissions impact respectively the five indicators based on money energy and emergy including ratio of nonrenewable energy to renewable energy rnr energy use per unit gdp eupg environmental cost per unit gdp ecpg impact of emissions per unit energy consumption iepec and environmental benefit per unit environmental protection investment ebpei are presented to depict the relationships among economic growth and energy consumption and impact of air emissions and air environmental protection investment the results show that energy consumption rapidly rises with china s fast economic growth however energy efficiency and environmental loading intensity from energy consumption are reduced simultaneously but their improvements fall far behind economic growth rate impact of air emissions mainly composed of impact of emissions on human health especially dust is slightly decreased the performance of air environmental protection investment is obviously declined in the study period generally speaking the conflict among economy energy and air environment protection is slightly mitigated but still acute due to great dependence of china s economy on fossil energy and inefficient environmental protection measures finally this paper discusses the corresponding issues and then puts forward some related suggestions

a multivariate analysis of the distribution of individual s welfare in china what is the role of health many economists have argued that income is an inadequate indicator of welfare in this paper we conduct a multivariate analysis of the distribution of individual welfare in china at three selected time points 1991 1997 and 2006 instead of using income as the only welfare indicator as in most distributional analyses we explicitly consider the role of health in welfare distribution we adopt the naga and geoffard 2006 decomposition method by which we can decompose a bidimensional welfare inequality index into two univariate atkinson kolm sen indices that measure the inequalities in health and income and a third term that measures the contribution from the joint distribution of the two attributes to total inequality we show that the third term might be used as an alternative to the concentration index to measure the income related inequality in health

regional redistribution and stabilization by the center in canada france the uk and the us abstract this paper re examines earlier estimates of regional redistribution and stabilization through the central government budget in the us and produces new estimates of this redistribution and stabilization in the us canada france and the uk the new estimates rest on panel data econometrics and an adherence to certain accounting principles that have occasionally been violated in the past as a result of the accounting the peak estimates for the us and canada in the earlier literature are never attained regional stabilization of personal income through the central government budget emerges as close to 20 in the us france and the uk but only 10 to 14 in canada in case of gross product instead of personal income accounting regional stabilization is closer to 10 in the us as regards france and the uk the use of panel data econometrics proves essential

inequality among world citizens 1820 1992 this paper investigates the distribution of well being among world citizens during the last two centuries the estimates show that inequality of world distribution of income worsened from the beginning of the 19th century to world war ii and after that seems to have stabilized or to have grown more slowly in the early 19th century most inequality was due to differences within countries later it was due to differences between countries inequality in longevity also increased during the 19th century but then was reversed in the second half of the 20th century perhaps mitigating the failure of income inequality to improve in the last decades jel d31 f0 n0 o0