global inequality how large is the effect of top incomes abstract despite the growing interest in global inequality assessing inequality trends is a major challenge because individual data on income or consumption is not often available nevertheless the periodic release of certain summary statistics of the income distribution has become increasingly common hence grouped data in form of income shares have been conventionally used to construct inequality trends based on lower bound approximations of inequality measures this approach introduces two potential sources of measurement error first these estimates are constructed under the assumption of equality of incomes within income shares second the highest income earners are not included in the household surveys from which grouped data is obtained in this paper we propose to deploy a flexible parametric model which addresses these two issues in order to obtain a reliable representation of the income distribution and accurate estimates of inequality measures this methodology is used to estimate the recent evolution of global interpersonal inequality from 1990 to 2015 and to examine the effect of survey under coverage of top incomes on the level and direction of global inequality overall we find that item non response at the top of the distribution substantially biases global inequality estimates but more importantly it might also affect the direction of the trends

empirical evidence on competitive bidding some surprising results abstract this paper compares the assumptions and predictions of common values auction theory with ocs leasing data we find that the general assumption of continuous bid density functions is not supported by the empirical evidence this leads us to suggest several lines for future theoretical experimental and empirical research

sharecropping and the capitalist transition in agriculture some evidence from the highlands of ecuador abstract sharecropping has been the subject of much debate among economists concerned with static efficiency and to some extent with equity this paper shifts the focus to the dynamics of structural change the research reported adds to the discussion a detailed account of a large number of sharecropping contracts and why they vary and offers a theory of the relationship between sharecropping as practised in the ecuadorian province of carchi and a particular pattern of structural change which is described as the transition to an agrarian structure dominated by capitalised family farms the prevalent use of wage labour on sharecropped land and the place of sharecropping in intergenerational asset transfers are shown to be important elements in explaining this transition

agriculture in recent development theory abstract this paper is a critical review of recent contributions to the literature on agriculture in development theory it considers and compares the main lines of advance made within neoclassical neo marxian and structuralist approaches recent neo marxian and structuralist studies of agrarian development reveal that traditional agriculture is neither stationary nor efficient that resource allocation cannot be separated from wealth distribution or production organization that forms of surplus appropriation do not necessarily follow the dictates of efficiency that the social relations of production may inhibit accumulation and determine the forms of technological change that the state s role in primitive accumulation is more economic than explicitly coercive political and that political and macroeconomic constraints preclude a simple get the prices right view of the intersectoral terms of trade the thrust of these developments is to challenge both neoclassical and some orthodox marxian formulations of agrarian development issues and add to the insights to be gleaned from a political economy of development

income distribution and income dynamics in the united kingdom in this paper we propose a model of income dynamics which takes account of mobility both within and between jobs the model is a hybrid of the mover stayer model of income dynamics and a geometric random walk in any period individuals face a discrete probability of moving in which case their income is a random drawn from a stationary recurrent distribution otherwise they stay and incomes follow a geometric random walk the model is estimated on income transition data for the united kingdom from the british household panel survey bhps and provides a good explanation of observed non linearities in income dynamics the steady state distribution of the model provides a good fit for the observed cross sectional distribution of earnings we also evaluate the impact of tertiary education on income transitions and on the long run distribution of incomes copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

trust interlinking transactions and credit in the industrial district an essential feature of the industrial district is trust among individuals and firms within it this paper focuses mainly on trust based on investments in building up a good reputation that is a personal capital that can even substitute for collateral in obtaining credit informal credit often linked to other transactions and especially subcontracting is therefore an important way of financing economic development in the industrial district moreover the importance of trust as personal capital gives rise to a double financial intermediation in the industrial district this double intermediation constitutes a device to reduce information problems that are usually responsible for credit rationing c 1994 academic press inc copyright 1994 by oxford university press

distribution of personal income development of a new model and its application to u s income data summary this paper proposes a four parameter statistical model of the personalized distribution of income using the income share elasticity approach suggested by esteban 1986 our proposed model includes the singh maddala 1976 and dagum 1977 distributions as special cases the generalized beta ii distribution of mcdonald 1984 is also a variant of this model it appears to give an excellent fit to us income data and its empirical performance turns out to be superior to those of the singh maddala 1976 dagum 1977 the five parameter champernowne 1953 distributions and the generalized beta ii distribution of mcdonald 1984 on some data

optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective abstract the game theoretic perspective in auction bidding has provided a powerful normative framework for the analysis of auctions and it has generated an impressive volume of research contributions tracing this research we review key recent advances which have greatly expanded our understanding of the operation of auctions and produced a more accurate analysis of mechanism design and optimal bidding we follow various experimental studies which have shown that the predictive power of auction theory remains in many cases limited for this reason we concentrate on research themes which enhance the applicability of auction theory leading to more realistic descriptions of bidding behaviors we identify important innovations which expand the environment of auction bidding and carry us beyond rational decision making we conclude providing directions of future research and discussing their implications

participation constraints in the vickrey auction abstract economic agents are characterized by two privately observable parameters their willingness to pay for an item being auctioned and their reservation utility level which must be exceeded in expectation to induce them to participate in this auction this creates a situation in which the distribution of willingness to pay among the bidders is endogenous for the case in which the parameters are jointly uniformly distributed the existence of an equilibrium is proven and characterized

market failure and control of labour power towards an explanation of structure and change in indian agriculture part 1 1 although existing approaches do on occasion shed light on certain specific aspects of indian agriculture in general they run into problems of methodology or content or more frequently both in particular it is misleading to treat indian agri culture in peasant economy no markets or neoclassical perfect market terms and problematic to view it as semi feudal markets subordinate to extra economic factors 2 analysis of the relationships between farm size land productivity sharecropping and mechanisation suggest the need for an integrated model which emphasises both the unemployment and poverty of poor peasants and the problems of supervision and control of wage labour and tenants 3 proper appreciation of the interlinked role of these factors can help to explain the system s inability to combine the abundant labour of the poor with resources owned largely by the rich it can also go on to explain institutional responses like sharecropping as partial solutions to the problem of intensifying labour use and technological ones such as mechanisation as a means of delinking large farm growth from the need to intensify labour use 4 the tensions and choices between these responses underlie both the problem of stagnation and the phenomenon of switches from sharecropping to mechanisation 5 for associated reasons more rapid growth in indian agriculture is unlikely without major institutional changes to create much new employment and is likely to be more capital intensive than is usually assumed

share tenancy external risk and labour use a note on pakistani data this article outlines a labour market based explanation of the institution of sharecropping it is argued that two distinct rationales for sharecropping within the non tradable labour based explanation pertain to the supervisory labour endowments of land owners on the one hand and non supervisory family labour endowments of tenant households on the other the validity of these rationales is tested at a macro level based on data computed for each district of the punjab and sind provinces in pakistan it is found that a labour market based explanation of sharecropping is important in the pakistan context the analysis has some regional and dynamic implications as well

using the dagum model to explain changes in personal income distribution this article studies the evolution of personal income distribution in spain from 1995 to 2005 using the dagum model dagum s three parameter model type i provides a good fitting to empirical income distributions in spain moreover its parameters can be interpreted as economic indicators of income distribution changes after studying the economic interpretation of the dagum model parameters we analyse the impact of parameter changes on different income percentiles and also on the evolution of inequality in spain using data from the european community household panel echp and the european union statistics on income and living conditions eu silc

equilibria in first price auctions with participation costs this paper characterizes the equilibria of first price auctions with participation costs in the independent private values environment bidders use cutoff strategies to decide whether they will participate in the auction it is shown that when bidders are homogeneous there always exists a unique symmetric equilibrium and further there is no other equilibrium when valuation distribution functions are inelastic when distribution functions are elastic at the symmetric equilibrium there exists an asymmetric equilibrium inelasticity elasticity includes concavity convexity of distribution functions as a special case we find similar results when bidders are heterogeneous

the distribution of personal income revisited in a recent paper majumder and chakravarty 1990 propose a four parameter model which they find provides a better fit to some income data than the lognormal gamma singh maddala dagum and generalized beta of the second kind gb2 distributions this note 1 demonstrates that the model proposed by majumder and chakravarty is a reparameterization of the gb2 and 2 reconciles the corresponding contradictory empirical findings reported by majumder and chakravarty

does supervision matter some hypothesis tests using indian farm level data abstract a model is developed and estimated to test for heterogeneity of family and hired labor in agricultural production and to estimate the impact of employer supervision on the productivity of hired labor plot level data are used from a rice growing village in semi arid tropical india the hypothesis that family and hired labor are homogeneous inputs was rejected results indicate that family member supervision is required to increase hired labor productivity output loss attributable to operating at reduced supervision intensity was greater than 10 on over 40 of the plots

contracts resource use and productivity in sharecropping this article identifies the contractual terms in sharecropping that result in efficient use of resources evidence is then presented from pakistan to comment on the manner in which landlords ensure that sharecroppers fulfil the terms it is shown that landlords in general specify contract terms that encourage sharecroppers to adopt new techniques of production productivity comparisons are also made for farms under different tenancy contracts to conclude that share cropping tenancies do not appear to result in output loss even when technology is changing

dagum vs singh maddala income distributions this letter shows that the dagum and the singh maddala income distributions are closely related it exploits this relationship to derive lorenz ordering results for the dagum distributions from known results for the singh maddala family

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

transaction costs risk aversion and the choice of contractual arrangements publisher summary this chapter discusses transaction costs risk aversion and the choice of contractual arrangements every transaction involves a contract and the transactions conducted in the marketplace entail outright or partial transfers of property rights among individual contracting parties the contractual arrangements through which these transfers are negotiated are several and varied the chapter presents a theory that states that economic efficiency is the same under various land tenure arrangements subject to the constraint of private property rights although transaction costs exist in the real world the theory enables the understanding of much of the farming behavior however the presence of a variety of contractual arrangements under the same constraint of competition poses the question of the choice of these arrangements if a firm can increase efficiency in production by employing productive resources of more than one resource owner a contract to combine the resources will be obtained the formation of the contract involves partial transfers of property rights in one form or another such as leasing hiring or mortgaging

auctions with heterogeneous entry costs it is well known that if bidders have independent private values and homogeneous entry costs a rst or second price auction with a reserve price equal to the seller s value maximizes social surplus and seller revenue and leaves bidders with no surplus further in mixed strategy entry equilibria social surplus and seller revenue decrease with the number of bidders we show that when entry costs are heterogeneous and private information the revenue maximizing reserve price is above the seller s value a positive inspection fee and a reserve price equal to the seller s value generates even more revenue and in either case bidders capture informational rents further seller revenue and social surplus may either increase or decrease with the number of bidders nevertheless seller revenue is asymptotically the same whether entry costs are homogeneous or heterogeneous our results are framed in terms of screening values rather than reserve prices and apply to any standard auction

resale in second price auctions with costly participation abstract we study sealed bid second price auctions with costly participation and resale each bidder chooses to participate in the auction if her valuation is higher than her optimally chosen participation cutoff if resale is not allowed and the bidder valuations are drawn from a strictly convex distribution function the symmetric equilibrium where all bidders use the same cutoff is less efficient than a class of two cutoff asymmetric equilibria existence of these equilibria without resale is sufficient for existence of similarly constructed two cutoff equilibria with resale moreover the equilibria with resale are more asymmetric and under a sufficient condition more efficient than the corresponding equilibria without resale

coordination and externalities abstract we analyze the gains of coordinating decisions in a regulatory framework in which agents are sovereign and tax inducements are socially costly we consider a general multi agent situation with externalities among agents incomplete information and type dependent reservation utilities when the regulator optimally leaves informational rents to the most efficient agents centralized coordination reduces global activity coordination induces more activity when the principal optimally leaves rents to the most inefficient agents last if we impose budget balance our mechanism can also be interpreted as the optimal auction of a public good with congestion externalities journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d62 d82 l51