urbanization openness emissions and energy intensity a study of increasingly urbanized emerging economies this paper analyses the impact of urbanization and trade openness on emissions and energy intensity in twenty two increasingly urbanized emerging economies we employ three second generation heterogeneous linear panel models as well as recently developed nonlinear panel estimation techniques allowing for cross sectional dependence the empirical results show that population density and affluence increase emissions and energy intensity while renewable energy seems to be dormant in these emerging economies but non renewable energy increases both co2 emissions and energy intensity in addition openness significantly reduces both pollutant emissions and energy intensity whereas urbanization significantly increases energy intensity but it is insignificant in increasing emissions this may be in part due to the recent increasing trend in adopting cleaner technologies in these increasingly urbanized developing economies

assessing the effects of wives earnings on family income inequality we argue that the effect of wives earnings can be assessed meaningfully only by comparing the observed distribution of income with a reference distribution the components of the standard decomposition of the gini coefficient have no implicit reference distribution and therefore should not be interpreted as a measure of the effect of an income source on inequality we suggest several intuitive counterfactual reference distributions and illustrate their use with 1979 and 1989 u s data we conclude that wives earnings reduced inequality in that the income distribution would have been less equal in their absence alternative measures of the impact have mixed results

family earnings and wage inequality early in the life cycle a bstract this article proposes an explanation for the fact that while wages of married women contribute to equalizing the distnrbution of family wages the equalizing effect declines during the early stages of the married life cycle the explanation is based on the interaction between on the job accumulation of human capital and labor supply behavior empirical results from the nls panel data suggest that the explanation is plausible and also show that in contrast to the results of previous cross section studies there is no decline over time in the equalizing effect of wives earnings on the distribution of family earnings

entrepreneurship and income inequality in southern ethiopia this article uses inequality decomposition techniques in order to analyze the consequences of entrepreneurial activities to household income inequality in southern ethiopia a uniform increase in entrepreneurial income reduces per capita household income inequality this implies that encouraging rural entrepreneurship may be favorable for both income growth and income distribution such policies could be particularly successful if directed at the low income low wealth and relatively uneducated segments of the society

in search of smoking guns what makes income inequality vary over time in different countries we investigate the forces affecting the distribution of income by analyzing an unbalanced panel of information for 16 industrialized countries for the years 1966 through 1994 income inequality is measured with the gini coefficient of equivalent disposable income individuals are the unit of analysis the statistical analysis uses panel methods the results suggest that many factors affect the development of income inequality some factors are strictly economic a decreased industrial sector generally fosters inequality and some support is found for the view that increased trade of manufactured goods from developing countries is also a factor other forces are outside a strictly defined market sphere low inequality is found when a large proportion of the labor force belongs to a trade union and also when there is a large public sector in addition demographic circumstances are important since the proportion of the population under age 15 has a positive effect on inequality we find however no association between the unemployment rate and inequality

urban spatial structure urban structure is increasingly characterized by decentralization dispersion and multiple employment centers much is known empirically about such patterns and about how the interplay between agglomerative and dispersive forces generates spatial structures that are complex and prone to multiple equilibria and dynamic path dependence these forces operate at different spatial scales many entail unpriced interaction and external scale economies deriving from product differentiation and endogenous technical change appear particularly important because these forces interact in complex ways inefficiencies in urban structure are resistant to simple policy interventions

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

imputed income from owner occupied housing and income inequality imputed income from owner occupied housing is generally not included in analyses of the distribution of income yet the value of homeownership is undoubtedly an important element distinguishing the economic status of one family from another in this paper using a new method to decompose income inequality by income source we analyze the impact of potential income derived from the net worth of housing on a representative national sample of us homeowners using 1980 survey of residential finance data we find that housing income adds less to inequality per dollar of income than does income from all other sources

are chinese cities too small this paper models and estimates net urban agglomeration economies for cities economic models of cities postulate an inverted u shape of real income per worker against city employment where the inverted u shifts with industrial composition across the urban hierarchy of cities this relationship has never been estimated in part because of data requirements china has the necessary data and context we find that urban agglomeration benefits are high real incomes per worker rise sharply with increases in city size from a low level they level out nearer the peak and then decline very slowly past the peak we find that a large fraction of cities in china are undersized due to nationally imposed strong migration restrictions resulting in large income losses

conflict management decentralization and agropastoralism in dryland west africa summary this paper reports on a four site study conducted in the sahelian zone of niger the study takes a novel mixed methods approach for understanding conflict management from the perspective of rural peoples by not only describing past highly publicized conflicts but also by analyzing the steps rural peoples follow to management disagreements that arise in their everyday lives this bottom up approach reveals both a capacity and preference among our informants to manage disagreements informally without involving village or extra village authorities decentralization initiatives by reworking the authority and responsibilities of authority based systems affect the role that these informal mechanisms as mediated by social norms and relations play in conflict management

income inequality and efficiency a decomposition approach and applications to china abstract this paper suggests a new interpretation for a decomposition of the theil inequality index when income can be expressed as multiplicative components applying the method to china we find that the impact of technical inefficiency on inter regional inequality has shown a declining trend

remittances and inequality in this paper the authors propose a framework and develop techniques for analyzing the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size and subsequently its impact on rural welfare household data are used to assign numerical coefficients to the impact of net remittances from both internal and international migrants on income inequality in 2 mexican villages the impact of migrant remittances on the distribution of rural income by size depends critically on the degree to which migration opportunities become diffused through the village population on the returns to human capital embodied in remittances and on the distribution of potentially remittance enhancing skills and education across village households our empirical findings demonstrate that in a village where many households contain internal migrants but few have experience migrating to the u s remittances from mexico to us migrants have an unequalizing impact on village incomes while remittances from internal migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution by contrast in a village with a long historyh of sending migrants to the us and hence a more ready access to us labor markets us to mexico remittances have an equalizing impact on incomes remittances from internal migrants in this village however embody a large human capital component and are highly correlated with household income hence internal migrant remittances account for a comparatively large share of inequalities in the 2nd village the overall effect of remittances on income inequality is favorable in both villages migration type migration stage and interaction terms all appear to play a role in this context the effects of small changes in remittances upon income inequality and rural welfare in the 2 villages are explored and some implications for migration and rural development policy are considered authors modified

marry your like assortative mating and income inequality has there been an increase in positive assortative mating does assortative mating contribute to household income inequality data from the united states census bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating additionally assortative mating aects household income inequality in particular if matching in 2005 between husbands and wives had been random instead of the pattern observed in the data then the gini coe cient would have fallen from the observed 0 43 to 0 34 so that income inequality would be smaller thus assortative mating is important for income inequality the high level of married female labor force participation in 2005 is important for this

convergence in per capita energy use among oecd countries abstract unlike previous studies which mainly focus on the integration properties of energy consumption and production this study examines the convergence of per capita energy use among 25 oecd countries over the period 1960 to 2010 in particular newly developed lm and rals lm unit root tests with allowance for two endogenously determined structural breaks are employed the results indicate significant support for per capita energy use convergence among oecd countries

legal pluralism and decentralization natural resource management in mali summary much recent work on decentralized natural resource management has focused on the institutional arrangements that shape the balance of powers between central and local governments it has given comparatively less attention to relationships between local government and community level institutions in mali decentralization has superimposed modern legal institutions on community institutions the ambiguous relationships between them can undermine both the authority of nascent local governments and the performance of customary institutions legal pluralism the coexistence and interaction of multiple normative orders with different sources of legitimacy and authority helps explain the dynamic nature of local institutions under decentralization this article examines the experiences of three malian communities with decentralized natural resource management one maintains autonomy from government another engaged its local government and a third negotiated a multi stakeholder agreement a local convention they demonstrate that crafting workable relationships between communities and local government requires a pragmatic approach to negotiating and institutionalizing political space for innovation in self governance

migration remittances and inequality a sensitivity analysis using the extended gini index abstract this paper uses the extended gini inequality index to examine the sensitivity of measurements of impacts of migrant remittances on the distribution of household income by size to different value judgements when measuring inequality the results illustrate the robustness of earlier findings that the impacts of migration on village income distributions differ for different types of migration and for different periods in a village s migration history the magnitude of these impacts however appears to be quite sensitive to the weights attached to incomes at different points in the village income distribution for example in a village with considerable mexico to u s migration experience remittances from mexico to u s migrants have a favorable effect on the village income distribution however the extended gini analysis shows that this favorable impact decreases as more weight is attached to incomes in the poorest households this finding is consistent with the view that barriers to high paying mexico to u s migration work exist for households at the bottom of the village income distribution

does financial development increase energy consumption the role of industrialization and urbanization in tunisia this paper assesses the relationship among energy consumption financial development economic growth industrialization and urbanization in tunisia from 1971 to 2008 the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration and granger causality tests is employed for the analysis the result confirms the existence of long run relationship among energy consumption economic growth financial development industrialization and urbanization in tunisia long run bidirectional causalities are found between financial development and energy consumption financial development and industrialization and industrialization and energy consumption hence sound and developed financial system that can attract investors boost the stock market and improve the efficiency of economic activities should be encouraged in the country nevertheless promoting industrialization and urbanization can never be left out from the process of development we add light to policy makers with the role of financial development industrialization and urbanization in the process of economic development

changes in the distribution of household income in brazil the role of male and female earnings summary annual survey data spanning three decades and a non parametric technique for constructing counterfactual distributions are employed to analyze the relationship between earnings and the distribution of household income in brazil results show that significant changes in the structure of female earnings reflecting rising wages and participation rates had limited equalizing consequences but considerable poverty reducing effects these developments counterbalanced poverty increasing changes in the structure of male earnings a stable macroeconomic environment was associated with a consistent but a limited fall in inequality and a strong decline in poverty mainly related to rising earnings among women at the lower end of the household income distribution

consumer expenditures and inequality an analysis based on decomposition inequality in u s consumption expenditures is examined using the lerman and yitzhaki covariance method for decomposing the gini coefficient by factors from the decomposition nonparametric estimates of elasticities with respect to total expenditures are derived using data from the 1987 u s consumer expenditure interview survey the overall gini based on total annual consumption expenditures is 0 33 consistent with parametric expenditure elasticities the gini expenditure elasticities for household operations apparel and services and entertainment are relatively high an implication of this result is that taxing such goods and services will increase the progressivity or reduce the regressivity of the tax system copyright 1993 by mit press

decomposing inequality in co2 emissions the role of primary energy carriers and economic sectors emission inequality across countries and the contribution of the energy mix and the sectoral composition of a country s energy use are of central importance to the climate debate we analyze the evolution of inequality in global co2 per capita emissions using both historical data on energy related co2 emissions and future emission scenarios generated with the integrated assessment model remind within our sample of 90 countries the results indicate that the gini index declined from about 0 6 in 1971 to slightly above 0 4 in 2008 a decomposition of the gini index of total emissions into primary energy carriers indicates that this reduction is mainly attributed to declining shares of emissions from coal peat and oil in total emissions and decreasing emission inequality within all fossil primary energy sources from the perspective of economic sectors the decline in overall inequality is almost entirely due to a decline of the contribution of emissions from manufacturing construction our analysis also suggests that an equally spread emission reduction from any one source would not have a major impact on overall emission inequality the analysis of future scenario data indicates that climate policy reduces absolute emission inequality while inducing drastic progressive emission reductions in all regions

a life cycle analysis of family income distribution the question of whether working wives widen or narrow the income gap between rich and poor families is examined using a life cycle analysis data are from the 1973 u s national survey of family growth and concern 5901 currently married women under 45 years of age the results suggest that the employment of wives tends to reduce inequality particularly among white families but to a different degree at different stages of the family life cycle annotation

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

earnings inequality and the changing association between spouses earnings increases in the association between spouses earnings have the potential to increase inequality as marriages increasingly consist of two high earning or two low earning partners this article uses log linear models and data from the march current population survey to describe trends in the association between spouses earnings and estimate their contribution to growing earnings inequality among married couples from 1967 to 2005 the results indicate that increases in earnings inequality would have been about 25 30 lower than observed in the absence of changes in the association depending on the inequality measure used three components of these changes and how they vary across the earnings distribution are explored

evidence on the political economy of the urbanization process urbanization and economic development go hand in hand as a country moves from a rural agricultural base to an urban industrial base this paper argues that urbanization per se occurs in response to the basic sector shift out of agriculture and government policies such as price controls and trade protection of industry affect the process only indirectly through their effect on sector composition however urban concentration the extent to which a country s urban resources are concentrated in one or two large cities as opposed to more evenly spread is much more directly affected by policies and politics the paper finds specifically that investments in inter regional infrastructure facilitates urban deconcentration away from primate to hinterland cities as does increasing democratization or increasing fiscal decentralization the findings move beyond establishing basic correlations in the data to trying to quantify causal effects in a panel framework with instrumental variables estimation

transforming rural economies migration income generation and inequality in rural mexico abstract we analyse how migration shapes the distribution and sources of rural income using nationally representative panel data from mexico income source gini decompositions provide some support for the migration diffusion hypothesis nevertheless migration s influence on other income sources and household re ranking substantially alter distributional impacts we find significant impacts of migration on non remittance income as well as changes in the effects of non migration activities on inequality over time we conclude that migration is transforming rural economies in ways that go beyond the scope of most past research on migration and inequality

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

few opportunities much desperation the dichotomy of non agricultural activities and inequality in western kenya summary using data from western kenya we confirm the existence of a dichotomous non agricultural sector the poverty and inequality implications of the differently motivated diversification strategies only partly correspond to expected patterns while high return activities are indeed confined to richer households low return activities constitute an important income source for households across the entire income distribution finally we examine the wider implications of our findings for rural livelihoods we find that only engagement in high return non agricultural activities is significantly associated with increased agricultural productivity it seems that such high return activities play a key role in triggering cumulative effects of relative livelihood success

recentralizing while decentralizing how national governments reappropriate forest resources summary decentralization initiatives have been launched in the majority of developing countries but these rarely lay the foundations necessary to reach decentralization s purported efficiency and equity benefits this paper uses a comparative empirical approach to show how central governments in six countries senegal uganda nepal indonesia bolivia and nicaragua use a variety of strategies to obstruct the democratic decentralization of resource management and hence retain central control effective decentralization requires the construction of accountable institutions at all levels of government and a secure domain of autonomous decision making at the local level

the shadow value of migrant remittances income and inequality in a household farm economy this article offers econometric evidence that income remittances sent home by family migrants stimulate household farm incomes indirectly by relieving credit and risk constraints on household farm production a high but unequally distributed shadow value of migrant remittances appears to reinforce an equalising direct effect of remittances on the income distribution across a sample of household farms in rural mexico

the impact of polycentric development on regional gap of energy efficiency a chinese provincial perspective abstract a reasonable distribution of urban systems is essential for optimizing spatial energy allocation and the quality of economic growth for china this study discusses the impact of the polycentric development on the regional gap of energy efficiency rgee i e difference in energy efficiency levels among cities in the same region in the chinese provincial context by employing a novel method using nighttime lighting data from defense meteorological satellite program s operational linescan system dmsp ols to measure the spatial structure of provinces and stochastic frontier approach sfa to evaluate the total factor energy efficiency our results firstly show that the polycentric development has a narrowing effect on the rgee second they show that the more government intervention can narrow the rgee of a province but being more open having more foreign direct investment fdi and using more coal can widen the rgee of that province meanwhile the level of regional urbanization is shown to have no influence on rgee third they show that the polycentric development has a negative effect on the energy efficiency of large cities but a positive effect on that of small and medium size cities which accordingly narrows the rgee the conclusions of this study not only reveal insights for policies that aim to reduce the rgee but also provide an empirical basis for future urban development strategies in the chinese provincial context

intertemporal labor supply and the distribution of family income the earnings of married women have a more equalizing effect on the distribution of lifetime family earnings or the expected present value of earnings than on the distribution of annual family earnings using panel study of income dynamics longitudinal data the intertemporal variability of wives labor supply causes the correlation between the lifetime earnings of husbands and wives to weaken relative to the correlation between their annual incomes resulting in lower lifetime inequality the inequality of potential income full employment earnings is found to be much greater for lifetime earnings than average annual earnings based on alternative endogenous wage hours models copyright 1989 by mit press

the impact of income components on the distribution of family incomes attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income this paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules u s data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules a wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained even when restricted to only naturally derived decomposition rules some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties

convergence analysis of regional energy efficiency in china based on large dimensional panel data model abstract with the advent of the era of big data large dimensional spatial panel data is gradually used to do empirical research in the macroeconomic field this paper adopts a data envelopment analysis dea approach to calculate regional energy efficiency based on the perspective of total factor energy efficiency using statistical data of 30 administrative regions in china on basis of spatial effects the paper assesses the convergence of regional energy efficiency in china using large dimensional spatial panel data model our results indicate that 1 there is significant spatial autocorrelation and clear spatial effects in china s regional energy efficiency thus spatial effects should not be ignored when assessing the convergence of regional energy efficiency in china 2 during the period from 2000 to 2014 china s regional energy efficiency not only exhibits absolute convergence but also exhibits conditional convergence the convergence rate is higher than the rate of absolute convergence after controlling for the initial conditions of the level of economic development foreign direct investment and government influence 3 the convergence rate of china s regional energy efficiency from 2004 to 2014 is higher than the convergence rate for the period of 2000 2004 which indicates that industry transfer has contributed to improvement in the convergence of regional energy efficiency in china since 2004

natural resources and decentralization in nicaragua are local governments up to the job abstract both decentralization and natural resource management literature suggest that natural resources could benefit from the redistribution of centralized management authority yet neither has sufficiently examined the processes already underway in numerous developing countries to decentralize resource management from central to municipal government authorities this study reviews the role of 21 local governments in forest management in nicaragua it finds that most interventions are economically motivated and that three key factors are needed for local governments to be good resource managers capacity incentive and long term commitment these three factors are part of a process in which civil society can play a critical role

inequality of energy intensities across oecd countries a note abstract this paper proposes the use of theil s second measure to analyze international energy intensity differences this index allows differences to be broken down within and between groups of countries in a consistent manner an analysis of oecd countries for the period 1971 1999 shows some basic points first the fall in energy intensities differences is attributable both to within group and between group inequality components second between group inequalities are currently the main contributor to the whole inequality value finally a detailed exploration on within group inequalities reveals the significant explanatory role played by eu countries

shocks income and wealth do they affect the extraction of natural resources by rural households summary this paper examines the effects of household and village level characteristics on environmental reliance and participation in resource extraction decisions unlike previous analyses that used case studies or regional samples i use a nationally representative sample of rural households rounds i and ii of the mexico national rural household survey enhrum econometric results show that participation in resource extraction follows an inverted u shaped relationship with income and that environmental reliance decreases with income beyond income results show that relatively wealthy households in rural mexico are less likely to participate in resource extraction and have lower reliance than those with less wealth there is also clear evidence that natural resources provide some sort of insurance for households that are subjected to negative agricultural shocks

a head to head comparison of augmented wealth in germany and the united states we examine the composition of augmented household wealth i e the sum of net worth and pension wealth in the united states and germany pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth of about 48 percent in the united states and 61 percent in germany when pension wealth is included in household wealth the gini coefficient falls from 0 889 to 0 700 in the united states and from 0 755 to 0 508 in germany if the wealth shares in germany were the same as in the united states this would lead to a 12 6 percent increase in the gini coefficient in the augmented wealth distribution in germany

decentralization institutional ambiguity and mineral resource conflict in mindanao philippines based on an analytical framework that builds on theories of incremental institutional change this article interrogates the relationship between decentralization and mineral resource conflict in the philippines here efforts to decentralize control over mineral resource wealth have resulted in a highly ambiguous institutional arena wherein heterogeneous actor coalitions are attempting to influence trajectories of institutional change and the associated distribution of mineral wealth on the ground this institutional renegotiation produces a diverse range of conflicts emerging on top of these institutional struggles are local elected politicians which raises important concerns over elite capture of the decentralization process

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

income sources effects on inequality abstract based on certain desirable properties a subset of entropy decomposition rules is proposed to assign inequality contributions to different components of income in addition a method of assessing the impact on inequality of marginal changes in income components originally applied to gini index by lerman and yitzhaki the review of economics and statistics 67 1985 151 is extended to other measures of inequality an empirical exercise based on australian income distribution data illustrates the usefulness of the proposed analytical framework

two decades of the rice economy of thailand 2530 31 2550 51 abstract this paper investigates the transitions in thai rice economy and farm household income structure it also describes the impacts of the changes on income inequalities and poverty indices during 1987 88 and 2007 08 crop years the cost of rice production has continuously increased over time contributing to declining returns despite increasing yields this suggests that the most effective way to raise farmer income is to reduce their production cost without reducing yields practices should be promoted that reduce production costs and maintain yields especially in the use of seed and fertilizer as to household income structure the non agricultural sector contributed a significant and increasing proportion of the farm household s income except in irrigated areas where rice farming still contributes the major part of the total income of households incomeinequality increased over the two decades this inequality occurred in the income from rice farming but other sources of inequality were in the other farm income and agriculture hired labor income despite this growing inequality there was an improvement in poverty situation during the period the incidence of poverty was lower in irrigated development villages than in the other villages keywords rice income distribution poverty reduction

the gini concentration index a review of the inference literature more than a century ago corrado gini proposed his well known concentration index for measuring the degree of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth his index is still extremely relevant and widely used in several fields of research and application in this paper we focus on the inferential properties of the gini index and discuss the main directions of analysis proposed in the literature the aim of the paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the main developments on the inferential aspects of the gini concentration ratio we feel that this work can provide a valuable contribution to those scholars who are approaching the large amount of literature on the inferential properties of the gini index

marginal tax rates and income inequality in a life cycle model in this paper we perform computational counterfactual experiments to examine the quantitative impact of marginal tax rates on the distribution of income our methodology builds on previous simulation models developed by auerbach and kotlikoff and fullerton and rogers and uses an algorithm that allows us to examine marginal tax rate structures in their literal form we find that distortions associated with particular marginal tax rate structures have sizable effects on income inequality in a reasonably quantified life cycle setting in our baseline experiments the change in steady state income inequality under 1989 u s income tax rates vis a vis 1984 rates is about half as large as the change actually seen in the data over those two years when measured in terms of a monetary metric derived from gini coefficients

distributional consequences of globalisation empirical evidence from panel data abstract this paper investigates the impact of globalisation on cross country inequality using a large panel dataset the findings reveal that location and capital are the main determinants of inequality trade intensity and foreign direct investment make only a small contribution approximately 4 the relative contributions of trade and foreign direct investment to inequality have changed little over time and have certainly not increased at the same rate as the rise in global trade and investment activity hence globalisation does not emerge as a significant factor in driving cross country inequality differences emerge when countries are grouped by relative income but the main findings persist

the legal environment and incentives for change in property rights institutions summary land conflicts in many parts of the world indicate pressures for change in the property rights institutions governing land acquisition and land use whether or not institutional change occurs depends on the incentives and capacities of political actors this article argues that the legal environment is one factor influencing incentives for institutional change three case studies of land governance in southeast asia s palm oil industry illustrate three types of legal environment rule by law legalism legal pluralism and lawlessness or routinized illegality the cases show that the legal environment shapes modes of resistance to property reallocations in the palm oil industry rule by law legalism supports legalized modes of resistance through the court system in contrast legal pluralism and lawlessness favor the use of political strategies to contest property reallocations the mode of resistance in turn determines whether actors acquiring property have incentives to gain legal cover or whether investing in political resources is more rewarding although the effectiveness of resistance is largely determined by the distribution of political resources the mode of resistance helps explain whether there is demand for property rights institutions that offer generalized legal certainty in property protection path dependence arising from the legal environment therefore influences the direction of institutional change

relationship between energy intensity and economic growth new evidence from a multi country multi sector data set this paper revisits the relationship between energy intensity and economic growth using a flexible piecewise linear regression model based on a panel data set of 137 economies during 1990 2014 the analysis identifies a threshold effect of income growth on energy intensity change although energy intensity is negatively correlated with income growth throughout the entire sample and study period the declining rate significantly slows by more than 30 percent after the level of per capita income reaches 5 000 based on index decomposition the analysis also finds that although structural change is important for intensity levels in all countries the efficiency effect is more important in higher income countries the results suggest that when countries move beyond lower middle income levels energy efficiency policies become far more critical for sustaining the rate of improvement in energy efficiency

poverty and the rural nonfarm economy in oromia ethiopia the rural nonfarm sector has gained increasing importance not only in asia but also in africa it is however widely believed that in most parts of africa the growth of the nonfarm economy has increased inequality and has had a limited effect on the poor who face entry barriers to nonfarm activities the present article analyzes the relation between nonfarm income poverty and inequality in oromia ethiopia we use two complementary methodologies i econometric estimates of household income from the nonfarm sector and ii a gini decomposition of analysis income inequality by source the results consistently indicate that in oromia entry barriers to nonfarm activities is low and the general growth of the sector will benefit the poor

convergence in energy consumption per capita among asean countries abstract we test for convergence in energy consumption per capita among asean countries over the period 1971 to 2011 using the panel kpss stationarity test and panel lagrange multiplier lm unit root test the results for the panel stationarity and unit root tests with structural breaks find support for energy convergence in asean

working married women and the distribution of income in this paper we analyze the impact of the earnings of working married women on the distribution of total household income using the theil measure of inequality we first show how this impact can be decomposed into three easily interpretable components one of which is the labor force participation rate of married women then using data from the current population survey we present the development of these components for each year during the period 1968 1980 our main conclusion is that the equalizing impact of wives earnings on total household income inequality has become increasingly important

the path of technological progress for china s low carbon development evidence from three urban agglomerations abstract it is widely believed that technological progress is the key driving force for low carbon development based on a panel data of 50 cities during the period 2005 2014 in china s three urban agglomerations beijing tianjin hebei yangtze river delta and pearl river delta this paper presents a comprehensive analysis on the path of technological progress for the low carbon development specifically it firstly estimates the factor biased technological progress by using a translog production function model and then dynamic panel data models are used to investigate the impacts of three sources of technological progress including rd finally we introduce an index to measure the appropriate technical structure and analyze the technological improvement strategy to the low carbon development the main results indicate that technological progress of the three urban agglomerations is biased toward electricity thereby shows a electricity saving effect fdi shows electricity saving and carbon reduction effects but rd the impacts of import and export on the factor biased technological progress are weak furthermore the path of technological progress is highly related to the level of economy when gdp per capita is higher than 37 000 yuan indigenous innovation is the main driver for low carbon development

do urbanization and industrialization affect energy intensity in developing countries abstract against a backdrop of concerns about climate change peak oil and energy security issues reducing energy intensity is often advocated as a way to at least partially mitigate these impacts this study uses recently developed heterogeneous panel regression techniques like mean group estimators and common correlated effects estimators to model the impact that income urbanization and industrialization has on energy intensity for a panel of 76 developing countries in the long run a 1 increase in income reduces energy intensity by 0 45 to 0 35 long run industrialization elasticities are in the range 0 07 to 0 12 the impact of urbanization on energy intensity is mixed in specifications where the estimated coefficient on urbanization is statistically significant it is slightly larger than unity the implications of these results for energy policy are discussed

energy productivity and chinese local officials promotions evidence from provincial governors abstract improving energy productivity is one of the most cost effective ways to achieve a sustainable development target the existing literature has shown some factors that have driven the improvement in china s energy productivity however these studies do little to tackle the role of chinese local officials political promotions can be seen as the most important career incentive for chinese local officials hence we intend to study whether energy productivity affects chinese local officials promotions in this paper the data of position changes for the 31 provincial governors during 1978 2012 are utilized we adopted probit models to empirically examine the correlation between provincial governors political promotions and energy productivity the empirical results demonstrate that 1 energy productivity has a significantly positive impact on provincial governors political promotions in china meaning that the provincial governors have the momentum to improve energy productivity and 2 the effect of energy productivity on provincial governors political promotions has evolved dynamically changing along with the transformation of the economic growth mode and the adjustment of the local officials promotion mechanism the results are helpful in understanding the drivers of the improvement in china s energy productivity and provide insightful implications for conducting energy policy in china

comment on the interpretation and misinterpretation of inequality decompositions by income sources summary this paper discusses interpretations of different inequality decomposition rules when inequality is decomposed by income sources it argues that authors of a recent article based their conclusions on misinterpreted decomposition results it also argues that marginal effects derived as elasticities of inequality with respect to uniform increases in income from each source are easily interpreted and can be compared across different decomposition rules

the impact of income inequality on economic residential segregation the case of malmo 1991 2010 as in other western countries in sweden there is a widespread conviction that residential segregation influences the opportunities for residents social mobility and therefore is a cause of income

inequality and poverty in united states the effects of rising dispersion of men s earnings and changing family behaviour using semiparametric density estimation techniques we analyse the effect of rising dispersion of men s earnings and related changes in family behaviour on increasing inequality in the distribution of family income in the united states for the period 1969 1989 the growing dispersion of men s earnings and changing family structure can account for most of the rise in family income inequality by contrast the increase in labour force participation by women offset this trend inequality grew at a slower rate in the 1990s than in earlier decades largely because of stabilization in the relative earnings of men from low income families

marital sorting inequality and the role of female labor supply evidence from east and west germany this paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross sectional earnings inequality in germany over the past three decades while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices using rich micro data the observed distribution of couples earnings is compared to a counterfactual of randomly matched spouses hypothetical earnings are predicted based on a structural model of household labor supply for west germany a positive effect of marital sorting on inequality is found after adjusting for labor supply behavior while the effect is limited when earnings are taken as given this means that there is positive sorting in earnings potential which is veiled by relatively low female labor force participation in east germany the impact of marital sorting on inequality is highly disequalizing irrespective of adjusting for labor supply choices this is mainly due to the fact that east german women are much more attached to the labor market

small firms borrowed size and the urban rural shift in this paper we suggest that some elements of the observed urban rural shift in firm formation and growth may centre on the phenomenon of borrowed size in doing so we make a link between literature on the geography of small firm formation and growth the theory of agglomeration and the relations among settlements within urban systems spatial externality fields have expanded over time so that small firms can locate in smaller settlements and yet access specialized labour and informational external economies of nearby larger urban areas we examine the relevance of aspects of borrowed size in the relationship of small firms in leighton linslade and lichfield to the local economy and nearby larger urban centres in particular we question the contribution of local institutional support to the growth of rural enterprise stressed in recent analysis we conclude by briefly noting the implications of borrowed size for conceptions of the local economy and local economic policy cet article cherche a avancer

nonfarm employment and rural welfare evidence from the himalayas the potential importance of nonfarm employment for the welfare of rural households has long been recognized but whether the nonfarm sector offers prospects for improving the welfare of the rural poor remains a contentious issue we examine distributional and well being effects of nonfarm employment of rural households in the himalayas we account for heterogeneity of nonfarm employment and estimate a system of structural equations to better understand the causal linkages between nonfarm employment and household well being the results confirm that disaggregating nonfarm employment activities matters for understanding the relationship between nonfarm employment and rural welfare while low return nonfarm employment is associated with lower income inequality high return nonfarm activities have a disequalizing effect on the distribution of household incomes we also find that the ability to engage in high return nonfarm activities is associated with higher economic well being poor households on the other hand tend to rely on low return activities that do not contribute to improved well being

does urbanization affect energy intensities across provinces in china long run elasticities estimation using dynamic panels with heterogeneous slopes abstract although there has been extensive debate in the literature that addresses the impact of urbanization on total energy use the relative magnitude of each impact channel has not been empirically examined and urbanization s effects on energy transition dynamics in china remains unknown using panel datasets at the provincial level from 1986 to 2011 this paper employs dynamic models to investigate both the long run and short run elasticities of urbanization on energy intensities and the most significant impact channel is identified coal intensity and electricity intensity are also modeled to reveal energy transition dynamics driven by urbanization a set of newly developed regression techniques namely well performed common correlated effects mean group ccemg and augmented mean group amg estimators are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence nonstationary residuals and unlikely to hold homogeneous slope assumptions the results obtained verify that the net effects of urbanization on overall energy intensity and electricity intensity are statistically positive with long run elasticities of 0 14 to 0 37 and 0 23 to 0 29 respectively whereas china s urbanization does not significantly increase coal intensity the fact that short run elasticities account for a majority of corresponding long run values indicates that the short run effect that is indirect energy use induced by urban infrastructures is the most significant impact channel of urbanization on energy use in china an energy transition from high pollution coal to clean electricity is also present in china although the fundamental transition to renewable energy is still in its infancy from a regional perspective urbanization exerts asymmetric impacts on provincial energy use so that energy policies associated with urbanization should be province specific the findings also illustrate that for a panel dataset on regional dimension within large and fast growing economies such as china error cross sectional dependence and residual nonstationarity must be tested and properly treated to avoid size distortion and biased estimators

the distribution of income and wealth of farm operator households because of the relatively low incomes of people associated with farming in the past income maintenance has been a major focus of farm policy the average money income of families earning farm self employment income in 1983 was 93 of the average money income of other u s families usdc however an average income of farm households has lost much of its meaning because it masks a great deal of variation compared to the past farm households represent a heterogenous population presenting a new challenge to policy makers concerned about framing income maintenance policies the current farm bill debate began in 1984 amidst piecemeal information on increased bankruptcies and general financial stress of farms analysis of the financial leverage and cash flow positions of farm businesses has since been forthcoming johnson baum and prescott however information on the financial well being of those households associated with farming has remained limited the purpose of this paper is to describe the financial well being of farm operator households by measuring their size distribution of personal income and farm equity in 1984 the contribution of each source of income to the total inequality of incomes is also analyzed

wage policies of a russian firm and the financial crisis of 1998 evidence from personnel data 1997 to 2002 the authors use a rich personnel data set from a russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 to analyze how the firm adjusts wages and employment during this period in which local labor market conditions changed in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 1998 they relate the development of turnover and wages for various employment categories to alternative models of wage and employment determination the authors argue that the firm s behavior is consistent with the predictions of efficiency wage models of the shirking and turnover type

measuring the effects of socio economic variables on the income distribution an application to the east german transition process this paper develops a discrete variant of the semiparametric methodology of dinardo fortin and lemieux 1996 dfl to measure the effects of socio economic variables on the income distribution although the proposed method is also based on the calculation of hypothetical income distributions by reweighting the original population it is much easier to implement the framework is applied to examine the distributional effects of rising unemployment decreasing female labor market participation and widening income structure in east germany following the reunification with west germany in 1990 the empirical results suggest that both these tendencies contributed considerably to the recent increase in income inequality in east germany

the causal factors of international inequality in hbox co _ 2 emissions per capita a regression based inequality decomposition analysis this paper uses the possibilities provided by the regression based inequality decomposition fields in res labor econ 22 1 38 2003 to explore the contribution of different explanatory factors to international inequality in hbox co 2 emissions per capita in contrast to previous emissions inequality decompositions which were based on identity relationships this methodology does not impose any a priori specific relationship thus it allows an assessment of the contribution to inequality of different relevant variables in short the paper appraises the relative contributions of affluence sectoral composition demographic factors and climate the analysis is applied to selected years of the period 1993 2007 the results show the important though decreasing share of the contribution of demographic factors as well as a significant contribution of affluence and sectoral composition

exploring the relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission in mena countries abstract this study explored the relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission in the mena countries the panel model was utilized taking the period 1980 2009 into consideration pedroni cointegration test results showed that urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission were cointegrated the dynamic ols results also showed that there was a long run bi directional positive relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission however the significance of the long run relationship between urbanization energy consumption and co2 emission varied across the countries based on their level of income and development moreover long and short run bi directional causal relationships were found between the variables based on the granger causality test results from the results of this study it is important for the urban planners and policy makers in the mena countries to slow the rapid increase in urbanization the level of energy consumption and co2 emission in the mena countries increased more than double thus slowing down the urbanization level can help reduce the level of pollution and energy consumption in addition the increased energy efficiency implementation of energy savings projects energy conservation and energy infrastructure outsourcing reduce the level of pollution produced by urban areas

educational homogamy positive assortative mating and income inequality in south africa an unconditional quantile regression analysis apart from being the first attempt at investigating the impact of education based homogamy and positive assortative mating on income inequality in a developing country context with very high levels

lifetime earnings inequality in germany we employ german social security records to investigate intragenerational lifetime earnings inequality and mobility of yearly earnings for 35 cohorts starting with the birth year 1935 our main result is a striking secular rise of intragenerational inequality in lifetime earnings west german men born in the early 1960s are likely to experience about 85 more lifetime inequality than their fathers in contrast both short term and long term intragenerational mobility are stable longer unemployment spells of workers at the bottom of the distribution of younger cohorts contribute to explaining 20 40 of the overall increase in lifetime earnings inequality

a life cycle perspective on changes in earnings inequality among married men and women abstract the connection between changes in earnings inequality of individuals and changes in family earnings involves several links the movements in the employment of different family members the association between changes in husbands and in wives earnings and patterns of assortative mating a decomposition of the logarithm of the coefficient of variation in family earnings identifies these links the data on the dispersion of family earnings are organized not simply over time but also by age the growth in wives relative employment and earnings has partly offset the effects on family earnings inequality of the increase in husbands earnings inequality

how urbanization affects energy use in developing countries abstract this paper identifies mechanisms whereby urbanization affects energy consumption industrialization and urbanization accompany each other during economic development but urbanization exerts a number of independent influences on energy use it permits economies of scale in production but requires more transportation food must be transported to urbanized populations and relatively smaller agricultural populations must modernize entailing considerable increases in agricultural energy use in cities a number of production activities which were domestically provided in rural areas using human or animal energy shift to sources outside the household using modern energy sources the largest single source of change in energy use is personal transportation passenger transport in cities is heavily weighted towards fuel using modes particularly as incomes increase to assess the overall impact a regression analysis of 59 developing countries for 1980 is conducted holding constant per capita income and the extent of industrialization the elasticity of energy consumption per capita and per dollar of gdp is between 0 35 and 0 48

linking yitzhaki s and dagum s gini decompositions in this article we show that the gini coefficient is simultaneously decomposable both by sources of income and by populations of income receivers for nonoverlapping income distributions the so called first best gini multi decomposition we show that this multidimensional decomposition is useful for many reasons i it is related to the degree of inequality aversion of the decision maker ii it is especially well suited to study inequalities between poor and nonpoor people iii it enables one to measure the impact of marginal tax reforms on within and between group inequalities respectively

unemployment shocks and income distribution how did the nordic countries fare during their crises we study the inequality of disposable income in denmark finland norway and sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries a standard measure of inequality the gini coefficient was surprisingly stable in all countries during this period by decomposing the gini into income components we test hypotheses about the reasons for this stable income distribution our most straightforward hypothesis that rising unemployment benefits counteracted the impact of more unequally distributed earnings receives only limited support more complex mechanisms seem to have been at work jel classification d30 d31 j60

urbanization economic growth energy consumption and co2 emissions empirical evidence from countries with different income levels abstract the growth of anthropogenic co2 emissions has been widely attributed to the combustion of energy in support of human activities associated with economic development while the link between urbanization economic growth energy consumption and co2 emissions has as a result received considerable multidisciplinary scholarly attention little work has been undertaken with respect to the how differences in the development stages or income levels of the countries studied may affect these relations here we empirically explore the link between urbanization economic development energy consumption and co2 emissions specifically taking into account the different income levels of the countries studied a series of panel data models and a balanced dataset for a panel of 170 countries were utilized in the study which took the period of 1980 2011 into consideration the result of panel cointegration tests suggested that a cointegration relationship existed between variables in all the countries studied and that a statistically significant positive relationship existed between the variables employed in the long run the results of a granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm provided evidence of varied granger causality relationships between the variables across the income based subpanels moreover we also undertook an impulse response and variance decomposition analysis that allowed us to forecast the impacts of economic growth urbanization and energy consumption on future co2 emissions during the period surveyed our results cast a new light on the importance of a country s development stage and income level for government policy decisions relating to the reduction of co2 emissions

income inequality income composition and macroeconomic trends israel 1979 93 the paper offers several explanations for income inequality trends in israel during 1979 93 two types of analysis are employed decomposition of the gini coefficient by income source and population sub group and time series regression on macroeconomic variables it is found that the slight increase in inequality over the period is a result of opposing forces and that the major difference between the inflation 1979 84 and stabilization 1985 93 periods is in the inequality reducing effect of direct taxes increasing in the first period while declining in the second unemployment had a regressive impact whereas inflation acted as a progressive tax in the first period but not in the second