the quality effect does financial liberalization improve the allocation of capital abstract we document evidence of a quality effect of financial liberalization on allocative efficiency as measured by dispersion in tobin s q across firms we predict that financial liberalization by equalizing access to credit is associated with reduced variation in expected marginal returns we test this prediction using a new financial liberalization index and firm level data for five emerging markets india jordan korea malaysia and thailand we find robust evidence that financial liberalization rather than financial deepening is associated with improved allocative efficiency

competitive targeted advertising with price discrimination this paper investigates the eects of price discrimination by means of targeted advertis ing in a duopolistic market where the distribution of consumers preferences is discrete and where advertising plays two major roles it is used by rms as a way to transmit relevant information to otherwise uninformed consumers and it is used as a price discrimination device we compare the rms optimal marketing mix advertising and pricing when they adopt mass advertising non discrimination strategies and targeted advertising price discrim ination strategies if rms are able to adopt targeted advertising strategies we nd that the symmetric price equilibrium is in mixed strategies while the advertising is chosen deter ministically our results also unveil that as long as we allow for imperfect substitutability between the goods rms do not necessarily target more ads to their own market in par ticular rms optimal marketing mix leads to higher advertising reach in the rival s market than in the rms own market provided that advertising costs are su ciently low in relation to the consumer s reservation value the comparison of the optimal marketing mix under mass advertising strategies and targeted advertising strategies reveals that targeted adver tising might constitute a tool to dampen price competition in particular if advertising costs are su ciently low in relation to the value of the goods we obtain that average prices with non discrimination mass advertising are below those with price discrimination and targeted advertising regardless of the market segment accordingly when i goods are imperfect substitutes ii advertising is not too expensive and iii targeted advertising constitutes an eective price discrimination tool price discrimination through targeted advertising may be detrimental to social welfare since it boosts industry pro ts at the expense of consumer surplus

single period multiproduct inventory models with substitution we study a single period multiproduct inventory problem with substitution and proportional costs and revenues we consider n products and n demand classes with full downward substitution i e excess demand for class i can be satisfied using product j for i j we first discuss a two stage profit maximization formulation for the multiproduct substitution problem we show that a greedy allocation policy is optimal we use this to write the expected profits and its first partials explicitly this in turn enables us to prove additional properties of the profit function and several interesting properties of the optimal solution in a limited computational study using two products we illustrate the benefits of solving for the optimal quantities when substitution is considered at the ordering stage over similar computations without considering substitution while ordering specifically we show that the benefits are higher with high demand variability low substitution cost low profit margins or low price to cost ratio high salvage values and similarity of products in terms of prices and costs

financial reforms and income inequality abstract using a panel of 62 countries for 1973 2005 we assess the impact of financial reforms on income inequality we find that removal of policies towards directed credit and excessively high reserve requirements and improvements in the securities market reduce inequality

the effect of market segmentation with demand leakage between market segments on a firm s price and inventory decisions abstract in this paper we address the simultaneous determination of price and inventory replenishment in a newsvendor setting when the firm faces demand from two or more market segments in which the firm can set different prices we allow for demand leakage from higher priced segments to lower priced segments and assume that unsatisfied demand can be backlogged we examine the case where the demands occur concurrently without priority and are met from a single inventory we consider customer s buy down behavior explicitly by modeling demand leakage as a function of segment price differentiation and characterize the structure of optimal inventory and pricing policies

industry and firm specific factors of innovation novelty this article investigates the underlying factors that might shape the firm s choices with respect to degrees of innovation novelty using a sample of 2983 firms observed under the portuguese community innovation survey we assess the relative relevance of a set of firm and industry specific factors in explaining firms choices about incremental or radical innovation the results indicate that both the firm s idiosyncratic historical factors giving rise to heterogeneous r d capabilities and the industry context have power to shape the firm s innovation choices even though firm specific factors appear to be more powerful the estimated impacts on firm s innovation novelty are nonetheless significantly moderated by the type of firm and industry

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

optimal fences and joint price and inventory decisions in distinct markets with demand leakage abstract this paper evaluates the simultaneous determination of price and inventory replenishment when a firm faces demand from distinct market segments a firm utilizes fences such as advance or nonrefundable payment to maintain separation of its market segments however fences are imperfect and allow a degree of demand leakage from the higher priced to the lower priced market segment we investigate the optimal structure of joint price and inventory decisions with fencing and demonstrate that more segments is not necessarily better especially when demand uncertainty is high in the presence of lost sales we also show the impact of imperfect fences on the firm s profitability and evaluate how fencing costs affect the optimal fencing decision

joint optimal determination of process mean production quantity pricing and market segmentation with demand leakage abstract the selection of an optimal process mean is an important problem in production planning and quality control research most of the previous studies in the field have analyzed the problem for a fixed exogenous price however in many realistic situations besides product quality product pricing is a paramount factor that determines the purchase behavior in the market in the experts opinion an integrated framework that incorporates pricing as a decision tool could significantly improve a firm s profitability most of the manufacturing firms yield products with distinguishable characteristics and therefore it is desirable to sell these products on the market at differentiated prices whereas the market segmentation achieved using differentiated prices is often imperfect a firm may experience demand leakages thus an optimal price decision must incorporate demand leakage effects for the firm to benefit from its differentiated pricing strategy in this paper these issues are addressed by proposing an optimal framework for joint determination of process mean pricing production quantity and market segmentation using differentiated pricing this research discusses a production process that manufactures multi class grade products based on their quality attribute the products are sold in primary and secondary market at differentiated prices while experiencing demand leakages the nonconforming items are reworked at an additional cost mathematical models are developed to address the problem under both price dependent deterministic and stochastic demand situations we propose a harmony search meta heuristic for solving the models a numerical experimentation is presented to study the significance of the proposed integrated decision framework

financial development economic growth and banking sector controls evidence from india this paper uses newly collected data from the reserve bank of india to examine the effects of various types of banking sector controls on the process of financial deepening with the exception of a lending rate ceiling these controls are found to influence financial deepening negatively independently of the well known effect of the real interest rate exogeneity tests suggest that financial deepening and economic growth are jointly determined thus policies which affect financial deepening may also have an influence on economic growth the role of banking sector controls in the process of economic development has received considerable attention in the literature the traditional approach due to mckinnon i973 and shaw i973 postulates that government intervention in the pricing and allocation of loanable funds dubbed financial repression inhibits financial development by depressing real interest rates see

income inequality and financial reform in asia the role of human capital we investigate whether financial reform can reduce income inequality in asia with particular emphasis on the role of human capital extending galor and zeira 1993 we demonstrate that financial reform is effective in reducing income inequality and the effect is more profound in a country with higher human capital using the data for 18 countries in asia the region with the most promising financial reform we confirm our theoretical finding in addition among disaggregated financial reforms lift of credit control better banking supervision and security market development seem to be significantly associated with reduction of income inequality

dollar vs percentage markup pricing schemes under a dominant retailer abstract we investigate two very common pricing schemes for a stackelberg dominant retailer percentage markup and dollar markup we show that when a dominant retailer switches from dollar to percentage markup the channel s overall pie and the retailer s pie piece are both enlarged in contrast the manufacturer will be forced to levy a lower wholesale price thus receiving a smaller pie piece despite the larger pie the preceding statements hold regardless of whether the demand is deterministic or stochastic however the effects of switching to percentage markup on the retail price and sales volume will depend not only on whether the demand is stochastic but also on the assumed demand curve shape and on whether demand stochasticity is additive or multiplicative besides presenting a comprehensive set of answers on the comparative performance of dollar and percentagemarkups our results also highlight the often overlooked importance of choosing between i dollar and percentage markup and ii the formats of the assumed stochasticity and demand curves

do financial reforms help stabilize inequality abstract we explore the relationship between financial reforms and income inequality using a panel of 29 countries in 1975 2005 we extend panel unit root tests to allow for the presence of some financial reform covariates and further suggest an associated but novel semi parametric approach results demonstrate that although both gross and net gini indices follow a unit root process this picture can change when financial reform indices are accounted for in particular while gross gini coefficients are generally not stabilized by financial reforms net measures are more likely to be thus financial reforms enacted in the presence of a strong safety net would seem preferable

capital account liberalization and income inequality this article makes both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the literature on financial liberalization and income inequality in the first part we develop a tractable model that features agents with varying investment abilities and a banking sector there are two possible interventions to liberalize the banking sector first a reduction in reserve requirements and second an increase in the amount of foreign funds that can be used to finance domestic loans financial liberalization leads to enhanced banking sector efficiency and adjustments in interest rates affecting income of investors and savers and therefore income inequality theoretically the impact of financial liberalization on income inequality is ambiguous yet the model suggests that financial liberalization will improve income distribution in countries where financial depth is high our empirical estimates confirm this conditional effect more precisely the estimates suggest that capital account liberalization only tends to lower income inequality if the level of financial depth as measured by private credit over gdp exceeds 25 percent

taxation and household portfolio composition us evidence from the 1980s and 1990s abstract this paper explores the relationship between household marginal income tax rates the set of financial assets that households own and the portfolio shares accounted for by each of these assets it analyzes data from the 1983 1989 1992 1995 and 1998 surveys of consumer finances and develops a new algorithm for imputing federal marginal tax rates to households in these surveys the empirical findings suggest that marginal tax rates have important effects on asset allocation decisions the probability that a household owns tax advantaged assets such as tax exempt bonds or assets held in tax deferred accounts is positively related to its tax rate on ordinary income in addition the portfolio share invested in corporate stock which is taxed less heavily than interest bearing assets is increasing in the household s ordinary income tax rate holdings of heavily taxed assets such as interest bearing accounts decline as a share of wealth as a household s marginal tax rate increases

multi fibre arrangement and wage inequality firm and state level evidence from india and a theoretical model the phased elimination of multi fibre arrangements mfa for textile and apparel has been one of the most compelling trade policy reforms that removed a system of bilateral quotas the reform brought in significant changes in the industrial structures for exporters from the south including india has the labour intensive high employment textile and clothing industry in india benefited from this global move towards freer trade for india the industry has witnessed unprecedented market concentration of export oriented firms firm level empirical estimate illustrates that workers in the export oriented firms in india are adversely affected due to withdrawal of quota accumulation of net fixed assets and growth of sales impart positive impact on firm level wages that cannot outweigh negative impact due to fall in exports we also find negative impact of profit on aggregate wage bill for the industry with firms spread over 11 major states in india we show that the mean deviation of industry level wage is positively and significantly associated with mean deviation of the number of factories at the state level and negatively with profit finally a brief analytical exercise obtains conditions under which joint withdrawal of quota and import tariff could raise the aggregate labour income in developing countries in general

inequality and poverty economists tend to be quite egalitarian in their evaluation of social issues according to one survey 71 percent of american economists believe the distribution of income in the united states should be more equal and 81 percent feel that redistribution of income is a legitimate role for government support for these positions is even stronger among economists with academic affiliations and stronger still among economists with elite academic affiliations of course as economists we also have a healthy regard for economic efficiency we are concerned with the size of the economic pie as well as with its distribution borrowing from the title of alan blinder s recent book 1 economists can be characterized as having hard heads and soft hearts hardheaded in our emphasis on efficiency and soft hearted in our concern with equality the hard headed soft hearted approach is familiar to economists who argue that it is reasonable to sacrifice a bit of efficiency in return for greater equality in principle this position seems unobjectionable but i intend to argue that we may have gone too far in attempting to promote economic equality through government policies in taking this position i run the risk of being labeled hard hearted and perhaps soft headed as well an important part of my argument however is based on distinguishing between economic inequality within the large nonpoor part of the population and the poverty that afflicts a small portiop of our population i fav9r a role for government in helping the truly needy but i will attempt to show that extending that role to permit redistribution among the general population is often counterproductive

nonlinear monetary policy reaction functions in large emerging economies the case of brazil and china this article estimates monetary policy rules for two key emerging market economies brazil and china it analyses whether the monetary authority reacts to changes in economic activity financial markets monetary conditions the foreign exchange market and the commodity price we assess the importance of nonlinearity using a smooth transition regression str model using quarterly data over the time period 1990 1 to 2008 4 we find that considerations about the output gap and the real effective exchange rate in the case of brazil and the inflation rate for china explain the nonlinear adjustment of the central bank rate moreover the results suggest that central banks pursue a target range for the threshold variable rather than a specific point target in the case of china the mccallum rule shows that the gdp growth the interest rate and the commodity price drive the response of the growth rate of the relevant monetary aggregate

fiscal adjustments labour market flexibility and unemployment using a panel of 17 countries for 1978 2009 we find that tax driven consolidations increase unemployment by 0 25 percentage points labour market flexibility mitigates this a one point rise in the flexibility index reduces youth long term unemployment by 0 6 0 7 1 8 2 2 percentage points

revenue management under a general discrete choice model of consumer behavior customer choice behavior such as buy up and buy down is an important phenomenon in a wide range of revenue management contexts yet most revenue management methodologies ignore this phenomenon or at best approximate it in a heuristic way in this paper we provide an exact and quite general analysis of this problem specifically we analyze a single leg reserve management problem in which the buyers choice behavior is modeled explicitly the choice model is very general simply specifying the probability of purchase for each fare product as a function of the set of fare products offered the control problem is to decide which subset of fare products to offer at each point in time we show that the optimal policy for this problem has a quite simple form namely it consists of identifying an ordered family of efficient subsets s 1 s m and at each point in time opening one of these sets s k where the optimal index k is increasing in the remaining capacity x and decreasing in the remaining time that is the more capacity or less time available the further the optimal set is along this sequence we also show that the optimal policy is a nested allocation policy if and only if the sequence of efficient sets is nested that is s 1 s 2 s m moreover we give a characterization of when nesting by fare order is optimal we also develop an estimation procedure for this setting based on the expectation maximization em method that jointly estimates arrival rates and choice model parameters when no purchase outcomes are unobservable numerical results are given to illustrate both the model and estimation procedure

finance inequality nexus the long and the short of it financial development affects income inequality differently in the short and in the long term investigating oecd countries from 1870 2011 we find in the short run an improvement in financial development tends to reduce inequality while in the long run more finance contributes to more inequality the short run effect concurs with theories advocating financial development increases the availability of financial services primarily for the poor however this effect becomes nil within a few years results thus imply that policies aimed at reducing inequality through improving access of the poor to finance need to be carefully designed to ensure longevity of impact

profitable pricing when market segments overlap in this paper we analyze profitable pricing strategies when market segments overlap overlapping markets are segments that are not perfectly sealed and leakage between them can occur different consumers are assumed to incur possibly different transaction costs if they choose to purchase in the low price market a monopolist seller knows the distribution of transaction costs across consumers and must choose an optimal pricing strategy in particular the monopolist must decide whether to charge a single price or to price differentiate conditions are derived under which price differentiation will be the most profitable strategy when price differentiation is optimal the equilibrium amount of leakage is determined endogenously unlike the standard economics textbook model of price discrimination in which zero leakage is determined exogenously and is usually given as a necessary condition for price discrimination we show that zero leakage is not necessary for differential pricing to be optimal and that

an integrated revenue management framework for a firm s greening pricing and inventory decisions abstract there is a growing interest on developing efficient ways of incorporating environmental considerations into business practices in order to meet both consumers demand for green products services and the firms sustainable profitability the main contribution of this article is in developing an integrated revenue management framework to address a firm s greening investment effort pricing and inventory decisions it is assumed that the firm inaugurates a green product along with its existing product even though the firm offers both the green and regular product at differentiated prices the market segmentation as a result of this price differentiation is regarded as imperfect this imperfect market segmentation causes a demand leakage mainly due to the heterogeneity among the customers willingness to pay these effects are included in our proposed model and simplified analytical solutions are developed to solve the same additional scenarios where a firm experiences a price dependent stochastic demand with an unknown distribution is also modeled this scenario is addressed using a distribution free approach based on scarf s rule the performance of the proposed methods and the significance of the modeling framework are finally corroborated through several simulations this analysis provides a sustainable environment production and retailing framework while still augmenting profitability using fundamental tools from revenue management

income inequality poverty and the liquidity of stock markets abstract using a broad cross sectional sample of countries this study tests whether stock market liquidity affects the level of income inequality after holding a variety of factors constant including traditional measures of financial development results show that liquidity in a country s stock market is negatively related to various measures of inequality we find that this relationship does not exist in the most developed countries instead our results are stronger in underdeveloped and moderately developed countries in addition we find that stock market liquidity is negatively associated with poverty rates in our final set of tests we attempt to identify the mechanism through which liquidity reduces inequality after decomposing wage growth into the portion that is driven by stock market liquidity and the portion that is orthogonal to liquidity we find strong evidence that liquidity induced wage growth drives the reduction in both inequality and poverty

price discrimination in related markets the pigou robinson pricing rule for third degree monopolistic price discrimination states that price ratios vary inversely with ratios of direct price elasticities of demand the rule holds when markets are sealed and cross price elasticities of demand are zero we show how the rule can fail when imperfect sealing permits leakage we also develop a general discriminatory pricing rule that holds when leakage causes market demands to be related the general pricing rule is based on all direct price elasticities of demand all cross price elasticities of demand and the size distribution of the markets

a taxonomy and research overview of perishable asset revenue management yield management overbooking and pricing this paper proposes the term perishable asset revenue management to denote the field that combines the areas of yield management overbooking and pricing for perishable assets after summarizing the characteristics common to problems in this field the paper discusses the objectives and constraints faced by decision makers then it offers a comprehensive taxonomy with 14 different elements and reviews the research that has been done related to each element finally it suggests some important areas of future research that can help bridge the gap between theory and application

optimal ordering discounting and pricing in the single period problem abstract the single period problem spp also known as the newsboy or newsvendor problem is to find the order quantity which maximizes the expected profit in a single period probabilistic demand framework previous extensions to the spp include in separate models the simultaneous determination of the optimal price and quantity when demand is price dependent and the determination of the optimal order quantity when progressive discounts with preset prices are used to sell excess inventory in this paper we extend the spp to the case in which demand is price dependent and multiple discounts with prices under the control of the newsvendor are used to sell excess inventory first we develop two algorithms for determining the optimal number of discounts under fixed discounting cost for a given order quantity and realization of demand then we identify the optimal order quantity before any demand is realized we also analyze the joint determination of the order quantity and initial price we illustrate the models and provide some insights using numerical examples

a risk tolerance analysis for a joint price differentiation and inventory decisions problem with demand leakage effect abstract price differentiation is a commonly used practice in revenue management rm to improve a firm s profitability however most studies in the literature have considered a risk neutral firm to demonstrate the benefits of price differentiation the main contribution of this paper is in considering several important objectives while determining the optimal product prices and order production quantities for a risk adjusted firm with demand leakage effects in the presence of a price dependent stochastic demand the objectives considered include the maximization of a firm s expected profit and maximizing the probability of exceeding the risk adjusted expected revenue closed form expressions for optimal product prices and production quantities are derived for several of these objectives a numerical study is also presented to calibrate the impact of a firm s risk tolerance and other factors such as demand leakage market demand variability on the firm s profitability and its optimal decision

urban income inequality in china revisited 1988 2002 abstract using newly available spatial price deflators this paper shows that inequality evaluations in the literature overstate the magnitude of inequality and inequality changes in china as well as the role played by regional differences in the recent inequality rise

fiscal consolidation and financial reforms we use a rare events logistic regression model as well as traditional probit and logit models to investigate the impact of fiscal consolidation on the likelihood of financial reforms for a panel of 17 countries over the period 1980 2005 we show that large austerity plans mainly implemented through spending cuts rather than tax hikes promote financial reforms by considering reforms affecting specific areas of the financial sector we find that the banking sector reforms and domestic finance reforms are more likely to occur when fiscal adjustments are put in place interestingly while banking sector reforms are mainly prompted during periods of tax driven consolidations spending cuts driven consolidation packages seem to propel the implementation of domestic finance reforms finally we show that higher inflation lower degree of trade openness a deterioration of financial conditions and to some extent a fall in the degree of competitiveness enhance the probability of financial reforms

an integrated approach to price differentiation and inventory decisions with demand leakage abstract price differentiation is among widely practiced tools in revenue management rm in which a seller offers same or slightly different products or services at different prices to its customers earlier research studies have shown that the benefits from price differentiation are evident when the market segmentation is assumed to be perfect in a perfect market segmentation customers associated with a market segment do not move between market segments however it is not uncommon to observe that a market segmentation a firm operates in is seldom prefect and due to imperfect segmentation customers move between market segments which is also referred to as demand leakage in addition the firms predominantly experience stochastic demand and thus a firm experiences both the short sales and leftovers due to demand uncertainty this research proposes a model to address the issue of an optimal market segmentation using price differentiation as a tool we also establish an integrated framework for pricing order and production quantity allocation decisions in each market segment when a firm experiences demand leakage from one market segment to another and faces price dependent stochastic demand the model is analyzed to determine an optimal decision framework on pricing order quantity allocation and market segmentation using the proposed price differentiation due to the complexity of the problem both the hierarchical and joint optimization approaches are developed a simplified closed form optimal solution to the problem is outlined in the case of hierarchical approach the model is also analyzed for a situation in which the distribution of the price dependent stochastic demand is unknown and a distribution free approach is utilized to address the problem it is identified that the use of distribution free approach also results in a closed form optimal solution to the problem a numerical study is presented to demonstrate the performance of the model and solution approaches the benefits of the optimal market segmentation using a differentiation price are also highlighted along with the proposed integrated optimal decision framework when a firm experiences demand leakage

some calculations of lifetime tax incidence this paper reports a set of lifetime tax incidence calculations using a life cycle simulation model for canada due to davies 1979a 1982 a repeatedly stated qualification to annual calculations in the empirical tax incidence literature is that it would be more satisfactory to make calculations on a lifetime basis even though it is acknowledged that lifetime tax incidence could well differ from annual it is widely believed that data and other difficulties make such calculations next to impossible indeed the widespread acceptance of the data problems of lifetime calculations seems also to have inhibited speculation about how lifetime tax incidence might differ from annual as a result redistributive tax policy judgments continue to be based on annual incidence calculations in spite of the reservations many have about their usefulness our paper is intended to reorient discussion towards lifetime tax incidence by providing some initial null hypotheses about the shape of lifetime tax profiles our main finding is that under the standard competitive assumptions common in the incidence literature lifetime and annual incidence calculations both produce mild progression in tax rates across household deciles ignoring the bottom decile in the annual calculation while the income tax is less progressive in lifetime than in annual calculations other taxes are for the most part less regressive also lifetime incidence calculations are much more robust to alternative shifting assumptions than annual calculations in the lifetime context key distributions such as earnings transfer payments and consumption are less heavily concentrated in particular percentiles of the population than is true in annual data as a result changing the allocative series for any particular tax does not have the large effect on incidence results found in annual calculations each component of the tax system is allocated to households grouped by lifetime income using particular distributive series following a procedure similar to that employed in annual incidence calculations for example richard musgrave et al 1974 joseph pechman and benjamin okner 1974 edgar browning and william johnson 1979 w irwin gillespie 1980 in the process we are able to compare lifetime and annual incidence calculations using the same data set in both lifetime and annual calculations we allocate five groups of taxes among households using distributive series which come partly from the 1971 statistics canada survey of consumer finances scf and partly from our life cycle simulation model the scf data are used to construct synthetic longitudinal lifetime profiles of earnings and transfer payments for a sample of 500 households the latter are assigned inheritances by simulating patterns of mortality and bequest these data are then used in the life cycle model to generate lifetime consumption profiles and bequests the earnings transfer and inheritance data plus the model output provide the distributive series on which alternative incidence calculations are based while the incidence calculations presented in this paper use canadian data results would likely be similar for the united states

the trade off between equality and efficiency this paper uses a 1976 microdata base to estimate the marginal cost of reducing income inequality with a policy that has distributional effects similar to the present tax transfer system the analysis uses a simulation methodology in which only the labor supply effects are evaluated other behavioral effects are ignored the most striking finding is that marginal cost is quite high even for modest labor supply elasticities for example in the benchmark case with a weighted average economy wide uncompensated wage elasticity of 0 2 and compensated elasticity of 0 31 the disposable money income of upper income quintiles of households is depressed by 9 51 for each dollar increase in the disposable money income of lower income quintiles when income equivalent values that take account of the value of leisure are compared the marginal cost for this case is estimated to be 3 49

financial development financial structure and income inequality in china using panel data of 23 provinces during the period 1996 2012 this paper investigates the impacts of financial development and structure on income inequality in different administrative districts urban rural and overall in china the results produced by the dynamic generalised method of moments estimator provide some evidence for a linear and inverse u shape relationship between financial development and income inequality and increasing the relative importance of financial markets to banks helps to reduce income inequality furthermore the results of panel threshold regressions show that the benefits of financial development only occur if the stock market activity has reached a threshold level and disappear if the stock market capitalisation has reached a certain scale meanwhile the impact of the financial structure weakens as the financial development expands and the proportion of financial markets increases we also find that the impacts of financial development and structure on rural income inequality are stronger than those on urban income inequality

the political economy of financial regulation evidence from u s state usury laws in the 19th century financial regulation was as hotly debated a political issue in the 19th century as it is today we study the political economy of state usury laws in 19th century america exploiting the wide variation in regulation enforcement and economic conditions across states and time we find that usury laws when binding reduce credit and economic activity especially for smaller firms we examine the motives of regulation and find that usury laws coincide with other economic and political policies favoring wealthy political incumbents particularly when they have more voting power the evidence suggests financial regulation is driven by private interests capturing rents from others rather than public interests protecting the underserved we examine the motives and consequences of financial regulation to better understand the implications of regulation for financial development and economic growth while the current global financial crisis has reinvigorated the debate on financial regulation s effects and motives there is a long history of financial regulation and development we can examine to shed light on these issues specifically we study the political economy of financial regulation and its consequences through the lens of usury laws in 19th century america usury laws are arguably the oldest form of financial regulation mentioned in both the bible and the koran and dating back to ancient rome having long been