a dynamic tiebout theory of voluntary vs involuntary provision of public goods this paper considers a dynamic model of tiebout like migration between communities that utilize distinct allocation procedures for public goods at issue is whether voluntary or compulsory procedures are more likely to prevail over time we model infinitely lived individuals who make repeated sequential location decisions over one of two communities each community uses a distinct mechanism for allocating public goods the first is one in which contributions are given voluntarily by the citizenry of the community the second is a compulsory scheme by which individuals are taxed proportionately to wealth with the tax determined by a majority vote opportunities to accumulate wealth exist via accumulation of public capital the markov perfect equilibria of the dynamic game are studied our main result shows that when accumulated wealth converges to a steady state individuals locational choices eventually select the involuntary provision mechanism this holds despite the fact that unanimous location in the voluntary provision community may in many cases remain as a nash equilibrium of the static game each period we also describe conditions under which voluntary provision survives these conditions require that accumulation of capital fails to decrease wealth dispersion over time the results are shown to be consistent with findings relating inequality to school choice

the political economy of corporate control and labor rents in a democracy a political majority can influence both the corporate governance structure and the return to human and financial capital we argue that when financial wealth is sufficiently concentrated there is political support for high labor rents and a strong governance role for banks or large investors the model is consistent with the great reversal phenomenon in the first half of the twentieth century we offer evidence that in several financially developed countries a financially weakened middle class became concerned about labor income risk associated with free markets and supported a more corporatist financial system

occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

questioning the empirical basis of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 new evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross dependence abstract this paper investigates the time series properties of per capita co2 emissions and per capita gdp levels for a sample of 86 countries over the period 1960 2000 for that purpose we employ a state of the art panel stationarity test which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope thereby controlling for cross sectional dependence through bootstrap methods our analysis renders clear cut evidence that per capita gdp levels are nonstationary for the world as a whole while per capita co2 is found to be regime wise trend stationary the analysis of country groups shows that for africa and asia per capita co2 is best described as nonstationary while per capita gdp appears stationary around a broken trend in addition we find evidence of regime wise trend stationarity in both variables for the country groups consisting of america europe and oceania the results of our analysis carry important implications for the statistical modelling of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 since the differing order of integration in both variables for the world as a whole and for africa and asia calls into question the validity of panel cointegration techniques which assume that both variables are nonstationary and cointegrated with one another cointegration techniques would not be appropriate either for the case of america europe and oceania which are characterised by per capita gdp and co2 emissions being stationary around a broken trend similar conclusions are reached when we analyse country groups based on levels of development failure to properly characterise the time series properties of the data by not controlling for an unknown number of structural breaks and for cross sectional dependence could be responsible for the fragility and lack of robustness surrounding the estimation of environmental kuznets curves

studying the relationship between economic growth co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve in venezuela 1980 2025 abstract this work tries to determine whether it is possible to stabilize co2 emissions under a rapid increase of gross domestic product in a medium term the paper is an effort to study in detail how changes in the driving forces of the economy affect co2 emissions we study the case of venezuela for the period 1980 2025 using the methodology proposed by robalino lopez et al 2014 2013 1 2 which is based on an extension of the kaya identity and on a gdp formation approach that includes the effect of renewable energies we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc 3 hypothesis in a coming future under different economic scenarios considering therefore not only past data but also projections for the coming years we use cointegration techniques 4 and the jaunky 2011 5 specification to test the fulfillment of the ekc hypothesis in venezuela our predictions show that venezuela does not fulfill the ekc hypothesis but however the country could be on the way to achieve environmental stabilization in the medium term this stabilization could be accomplished combining economic growth with increasing use of renewable energy appropriated changes in the energy matrix and in the productive sectoral structure

the political economy of financial systems evidence from suffrage reforms in the last two centuries initially voting rights were limited to wealthy elites providing political support for stock markets the franchise expansion induces the median voter to provide political support for banking development as this new electorate has lower financial holdings and benefits less from the uncertainty and financial returns from stock markets our panel data evidence covering 1830 1999 shows that tighter restrictions on the voting franchise induce a greater stock market development whereas a broader voting franchise is more conducive towards the banking sector consistent with perotti and von thadden 2006 our results are robust to controlling for other political determinants and endogeneity

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in bric countries abstract this paper examines dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for a panel of bric countries over the period 1971 2005 except for russia 1990 2005 in long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on emissions while real output exhibits the inverted u shape pattern associated with the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with the threshold income of 5 393 in logarithms in the short term changes in emissions are driven mostly by the error correction term and short term energy consumption shocks as opposed to short term output shocks for each country short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take from 0 770 years russia to 5 848 years brazil to correct the panel causality results indicate there are energy consumption emissions bidirectional strong causality and energy consumption output bidirectional long run causality along with unidirectional both strong and short run causalities from emissions and energy consumption respectively to output overall in order to reduce emissions and not to adversely affect economic growth increasing both energy supply investment and energy efficiency and stepping up energy conservation policies to reduce unnecessary wastage of energy can be initiated for energy dependent bric countries

energy consumption real income and temporal causality results from a multi country study based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques abstract unlike previous studies on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth this paper illustrates how the finding of cointegration i e long term equilibrium relationship between these variables may be used in testing granger causality based on the most recent johansen s multivariate cointegration tests preceded by various unit root or non stationarity tests we test for cointegration between total energy consumption and real income of six asian economies india pakistan malaysia singapore indonesia and the philippines non rejection of cointegration between variables rules out granger non causality and imples at least one way of granger causality either unidirectional or bidirectionial secondly by using a dynamic vector error correction model we then analyse the direction of granger causation and hence the within sample granger exogeneity or endogeneity of each of the variables thirdly the relative strength of the causality is gauged through the dynamic variance decomposition technique by decomposing the total impact of an unanticipated shock to each of the variables beyond the sample period into proportions attributable to shocks in the other variables including its own in the bivariate system results based on these tools of methodology indicate that while all pair wise relationships shared common univariate integrational properties only relationships for three countries india pakistan and indonesia were cointegrated for these countries temporal causality results were mixed with unidirectional causality from energy to income for india exactly the reverse for indonesia and mutual causality for pakistan the vdcs were not inconsistent with these results and provided us with an additional insight as to the relatively more dominant direction of causation in pakistan simple bivariate vector autoregressive models for the three non cointegrated systems did not indicate any direction of causality significantly in either direction

energy consumption and gdp causality relationship in g 7 countries and emerging markets abstract the causality relationship between energy consumption and income is a well studied topic in energy economics this paper studies the time series properties of energy consumption and gdp and reexamines the causality relationship between the two series in the top 10 emerging markets excluding china due to lack of data and g 7 countries we discover bi directional causality in argentina causality running from gdp to energy consumption in italy and korea and from energy consumption to gdp in turkey france germany and japan hence energy conservation may harm economic growth in the last four countries

a class of differential demand systems abstract the rotterdam almost ideal demand system cbs and nbr models constitute a class of differential demand systems they correspond to alternative assumptions made concerning the constancy of certain parameters this paper discusses the restrictions that they impose on the evolution of demand elasticities over time

an investigation of co integration and causality between energy consumption and economic activity in taiwan applying hsiao a version of the granger causality method this paper examines the causality between energy and gnp and energy and employment by applying recently developed techniques of co integration and hsiao s version of the granger causality to taiwanese data for the 1955 1993 period the phillips perron tests reveal that the series with the exception of gnp are not stationary and therefore differencing is performed to secure stationarity the study finds causality running from gdp to energy consumption without feedback in taiwan it is also found that causality runs from gdp to energy but not vice versa

differential consumer demand systems it is shown in this paper that several well known systems like the rotterdam model and the almost ideal demand system can be seen as different parametrizations of the budget share differential equation using a third parametrization a new system called the cbs system is developed and discussed special attention is given to the relative price version of the system and in particular to the special case of preference independence some estimates for the netherlands based on time series for 1953 1981 using various approaches are presented

inequality in landownership the emergence of human capital promoting institutions and the great divergence this paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human capital promoting institutions e g public schooling and thus the pace and the nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries the prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the u s

war and institutions new evidence from sierra leone scholars of economic development have argued that war can have adverse impacts on later economic performance war destroys physical capital and infrastructure and disrupts human capital accumulation and it may also damage institutions by creating political instability destroying the social fabric and endangering civil liberties world bank 2003 understanding war s impact on development is particularly important for sub saharan africa where two thirds of all nations suffered from armed conflict during the 1980s and 1990s the proliferation of armed conflict in the world s poorest region begs the question of what role conflict may be playing in africa s disappointing economic performance yet the net long run effects of war are ambiguous from the point of view of economic theory to the extent that war impacts are limited to the destruction of capital the neoclassical model predicts rapid economic growth postwar converging back to steady state growth several recent papers that study war impacts including in japan donald r davis and david e weinstein 2002 and vietnam miguel and gerard roland 2005 find few persistent local impacts of u s bombing with heavily bombed areas experiencing rapid recovery to prewar population and economic trends this is consistent with the neoclassical model if war s main consequence is to destroy capital war could also affect long run growth either positively or negatively by modifying the scale parameter in the neoclassical growth model for example while the world bank 2003 argues that war has adverse institutional consequences charles h tilly shows how war promoted state formation and nation building in europe historically ultimately strengthening institutions tilly 1975 we study the aftermath of the recent civil conflict in sierra leone one notable aspect of this project is the extensive household data for sierra leone on conflict experiences and on local institutions our results are complementary to the other recent studies mentioned above none of which examines institutional impacts

environmental degradation economic growth and energy consumption evidence of the environmental kuznets curve in malaysia this paper tests for the short and long run relationship between economic growth carbon dioxide co2 emissions and energy consumption using the environmental kuznets curve ekc by employing both the aggregated and disaggregated energy consumption data in malaysia for the period 1980 2009 the autoregressive distributed lag ardl methodology and johansen juselius maximum likelihood approach were used to test the cointegration relationship and the granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm to test for causality the study does not support an inverted u shaped relationship ekc when aggregated energy consumption data was used when data was disaggregated based on different energy sources such as oil coal gas and electricity the study does show evidences of the ekc hypothesis the long run granger causality test shows that there is bi directional causality between economic growth and co2 emissions with coal gas electricity and oil consumption this suggests that decreasing energy consumption such as coal gas electricity and oil appears to be an effective way to control co2 emissions but simultaneously will hinder economic growth thus suitable policies related to the efficient consumption of energy resources and consumption of renewable sources are required

income and wealth inequality in america 1949 2016 this paper introduces a new long run data set based on archival data from historical waves of the survey of consumer finances studying the joint distribution of household income and wealth we exp

revisiting aggregate u s meat demand with a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach do we need a more general theory although meat demand is one of the most studied issues in agricultural economics our understanding of this phenomenon has been hampered by valid concerns about model specification uncertainty this article revisits the need for more general theories of aggregate u s meat demand using a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach we draw comprehensive inferences over 1 048 576 demand systems we find very little evidence supporting the need for more general theories that include demand determinants beyond prices and expenditures we find strong evidence in support of symmetry and negativity but strong evidence against homogeneity which is consistent with other research copyright 2008 oxford university press

wealth inequality and intergenerational links previous work has had difficulty generating household saving behaviour that makes the distribution of wealth much more concentrated than that of labour earnings and that makes the richest households hold onto large amounts of wealth even during very old age i construct a quantitative general equilibrium overlapping generations model in which parents and children are linked by accidental and voluntary bequests and by earnings ability i show that voluntary bequests can explain the emergence of large estates while accidental bequests alone cannot and that adding earnings persistence within families increases wealth concentration even more i also show that the introduction of a bequest motive generates lifetime savings profiles more consistent with the data

rich pickings risk return and skill in household wealth we investigate wealth returns on an administrative panel containing the disaggregated balance sheets of swedish residents the expected return on household net wealth is strongly persistent determined primarily by systematic risk and increasing in net worth exceeding the risk free rate by the size of the equity premium for households in the top 0 01 percent idiosyncratic risk is transitory but generates substantial long term dispersion in returns in top brackets systematic and idiosyncratic risk both drive the cross sectional distribution of the geometric average return over a generation furthermore wealth returns explain most of the historical increase in top wealth shares

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

informality and development in developing countries informal firms account for up to half of economic activity they provide livelihood for billions of people yet their role in economic development remains controversial some like hernando de soto 1989 2000 see informal firms as an untapped reservoir of entrepreneurial energy held back by government regulations in this view unleashing this energy by reducing entry regulations or improving property rights would fuel growth and development others like levy 2008 take a more cynical view stressing the advantages enjoyed by informal firms and workers from avoiding taxes and regulations a report from the mckinsey global institute describes informal firms as parasites competing unfairly with law abiding formal firms farrell 2004 in this view informality should be suppressed not unleashed still others follow the development tradition of lewis 1954 harris and todaro 1970 and more recently rauch 1991 and see informality as a byproduct of poverty from this dual perspective formal and informal firms are fundamentally different productive formal entrepreneurs pay taxes and bear the cost of government regulation to reach new customers raise capital and access public goods these entrepreneurs are often educated and find it more profitable to run bigger formal firms rather than the smaller informal ones in contrast informal entrepreneurs are typically uneducated and unproductive and they run small businesses producing low quality products for low income customers using little capital and

the role of natural gas consumption and trade in tunisia s output this paper examines the impact of natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and trade on the real gdp in case of tunisia over the period of 1980 2010 we used auto regressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to test the existence of long run relationship between the variables the vector error correction method vecm granger approach is applied to test the direction of causal relation between the series our findings indicate the existence of long run relationship among the variables natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and trade add in economic growth natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and real trade granger cause real gdp these findings open up new insights for policy makers to formulate a comprehensive energy policy to sustain economic growth for long run

inequality leverage and crises the paper studies how high leverage and crises can arise as a result of changes in the income distribution empirically the periods 1920 1929 and 1983 2007 both exhibited a large increase in the income share of the rich a large increase in leverage for the remainder and an eventual financial and real crisis the paper presents a theoretical model where these features arise endogenously as a result of a shift in bargaining powers over incomes a financial crisis can reduce leverage if it is very large and not accompanied by a real contraction but restoration of the lower income group s bargaining power is more effective

shocking behavior random wealth in antebellum georgia and human capital across generations does the lack of wealth constrain parents investments in the human capital of their descendants we conduct a nearly fifty year followup of an episode in which such constraints would have been plausibly relaxed by a random allocation of substantial wealth to families we track descendants of participants in georgia s cherokee land lottery of 1832 in which nearly every adult white male in georgia took part winners received close to the median level of wealth a large financial windfall orthogonal to participants underlying characteristics that might have also affected their children s human capital although winners had slightly more children than non winners they did not send them to school more sons of winners have no better adult outcomes wealth income literacy than the sons of non winners and winners grandchildren do not have higher literacy or school attendance than non winners grandchildren this suggests only a limited role for family financial resources in the formation of human capital in the next generations in this environment and a potentially more important role for other factors that persist through family lines

investigating the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis in vietnam this study investigates the existence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis in vietnam during the period 1981 2011 to realize the goals of this study a pollution model was established applying the autoregressive distributed lag ardl methodology the results revealed that the pollution haven hypothesis does exist in vietnam because capital increases pollution in addition imports also increase pollution which indicates that most of vietnam s imported products are energy intensive and highly polluted however exports have no effect on pollution which indicates that the level of exports is not significant enough to affect pollution moreover fossil fuel energy consumption increases pollution while renewable energy consumption has no significant effect in reducing pollution furthermore labor force reduces pollution since most of vietnam s labor force is in the agricultural and services sectors which are less energy intensive than the industrial sector based on the obtained results the ekc hypothesis does not exist because the relationship between gdp and pollution is positive in both the short and long run

co2 emissions energy consumption trade and income a comparative analysis of china and india in order to prevent the destabilisation of the earth s biosphere co2 emissions must be reduced quickly and significantly the causes of co2 emissions by individual countries need to be apprehended in order to understand the processes required for reducing emissions around the globe china and india are the two largest transitional countries and growing economies but are in two entirely different categories in terms of structural changes in growth trade and energy use co2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have significantly increased in the recent past this paper compares china and india using the bounds testing approach to cointegration and the ardl methodology to test the long and short run relationships between growth trade energy use and endogenously determined structural breaks the co2 emissions in china were influenced by per capita income structural changes and energy consumption a similar causal connection cannot be established for india with regard to structural changes and co2 emissions because india s informal economy is much larger than china s india possesses an extraordinarily large number of micro enterprises that are low energy consumers and not competitive enough to reach international markets understanding these contrasting scenarios is prerequisite to reaching an international agreement on climate change affecting these two countries

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in turkey abstract this paper examines the long run and causal relationship issues between economic growth carbon emissions energy consumption and employment ratio in turkey by using autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach of cointegration empirical results for turkey over the period 1968 2005 suggest an evidence of a long run relationship between the variables at 5 significance level in turkey the estimated income elasticity of carbon emissions per capita is 0 606 and the income elasticity of energy consumption per capita is 1 375 results for the existence and direction of granger causality show that neither carbon emissions per capita nor energy consumption per capita cause real gdp per capita but employment ratio causes real gdp per capita in the short run in addition ekc hypothesis at causal framework by using a linear logarithmic model is not valid in turkish case the overall results indicates that energy conservation policies such as rationing energy consumption and controlling carbon dioxide emissions are likely to have no adverse effect on the real output growth of turkey

pareto superiority of unegalitarian equilibria in stiglitz model of wealth distribution with convex saving function this paper extends the conclusions obtained by stiglitz and others about the asymptotic wealth distribution in the neo classical growth model when the saving function is convex it is shown not only that locally stable two class unegalitarian equilibria may exist along with the egalitarian equilibrium but also that they necessarily are pareto superior to it more generally the paper also analyzes the class of pareto optimal unegalitarian equilibria

the long term effects of africa s slave trades can part of africa s current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades to explore this question i use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during africa s slave trades i find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance to better understand if the relationship is causal i examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades and use instrumental variables together the evidence suggests that the slave trades have had an adverse effect on economic development

house prices collateral and self employment this paper explores the role of the collateral lending channel to facilitate small business starts and self employment in the period before the financial crisis of 2008 we document that between 2002 and 2007 areas with a bigger run up in house prices experienced a strong increase in employment in small businesses compared to employment in large firms in the same industries this increase in small business employment was particularly pronounced in industries that need little startup capital and can thus more easily be financed out of increases in housing as collateral our results highlight the importance of the collateral lending channel during the period of the house price boom in the creation of small establishments we show that this effect is separate from the aggregate demand channel that relies on home equity based borrowing leading to increased demand and employment creation

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

diagnosis murder the death of state death taxes since 1976 more than 30 states have eliminated their death taxes and many others have reduced them this unexplored case of interstate tax competition presents a unique opportunity to develop a new more satisfying definition of competitor based on historical elderly migration patterns using data from 1967 onward we outline the recent history of state death tax competition and present a spatial econometric analysis interstate tax competition is evident and grows stronger when using migration based definitions of competitors the article concludes with still more evidence of interstate tax competition the recent movement by states to effectively revive their death taxes jel h7 d7 i introduction the federal estate tax has received wide attention especially because its elimination has been a centerpiece of president george w bush s tax proposals 1 largely overlooked however is the quiet revolution that has been taking place at the state level since 1976 31 of the 48 contiguous states have repealed their death or estate inheritance and gift eig taxes instead relying only on the pick up tax whereby states capture a portion of the federal estate tax liability but do not increase the overall liability of the estate 2 of the remaining 12 states that still have eig taxes 2 have enacted legislation that will eliminate them by 2005 and others are considering doing so beyond the outright elimination of eig taxes many states have also acted to reduce them in a variety of ways such as exempting certain beneficiaries such as the spouse this trend is noteworthy for several reasons foremost it appears to us a prime example of intense interstate tax competition due to the growing size and political influence of the elderly population there is additional political pressure because states may worry that high eig taxes will drive the high income elderly to move to bordering states or retirement havens the stakes may be substantial for example longino and crown 1989 estimate that florida had a net gain of 5 billion in income from the elderly migrants it received between 1985 and 1990 and sastry 1992 73 estimates that one new job is created for every 2 5 elderly migrants it receives state eig tax competition also provides us with a unique opportunity to explore alternative definitions of competitor states beyond simple geography because the movements of the tax base the elderly are fairly easy to track via historical migration data yet no research to our knowledge has explored interstate eig tax competition furthermore these widespread changes in state eig taxes provide substantial cross sectional and time series variation that has been mostly overlooked by researchers interested in the behavioral effects of estate taxes 3 state eig tax policy is also still in flux current and proposed changes in the federal estate tax have substantial revenue consequences for states effectively eliminating eig tax revenues for those that rely solely on the pick up tax how will the states react to this change at present several states have enacted or are considering legislation that would effectively decouple their eig taxes from the federal estate tax and so would preserve the revenue source indeed as the federal estate tax is slowly eliminated eig taxes in states that continue to use them may be the only remaining taxes on bequests yet little is known about them our research seeks to fill this void using state level data from 1967 to the present we first describe the brief history and geographical pattern of these widespread reductions in state eig taxes to our knowledge ours is the first research to document in a systematic way this phenomenon we begin with a chronology of the states that eliminated completely their eig taxes thereby choosing to rely instead only on the pick up tax however there are many other ways that the states may reduce their eig taxes such as increasing exemptions or reducing tax rates

inequality and redistribution evidence from u s counties and states 1890 1930 abstract does economic inequality affect redistributive policy this paper turns to u s county data on land inequality over the period 1890 to 1930 to help address this fundamental question in political economy redistributive policy was primarily decided at the local level during this period making county level data particularly informative examining within state variation also reduces the potential impact of latent institutional and political variables the paper also uses a variety of identification strategies including historic variables as well as county weather and crop characteristics as instruments for land inequality the evidence consistently suggests that greater inequality is significantly associated with less redistribution this negative relationship is especially large in heavily rural counties where concentrated landownership implied that landed elites also controlled the majority of economic production

the rise of mass consumption societies this paper studies mechanisms behind the rise of mass consumption societies the development process depicted follows the flying geese pattern in which a series of industries take off one after another as productivity improves in these industries each consumer good becomes affordable to an increasingly large number of households which constantly expand the range of goods they consume this in turn generates larger markets for consumer goods which leads to further improvement in productivity for such virtuous cycles of productivity gains and expanding markets to occur income distribution should be neither too equal nor too unequal with too much equality the economy stagnates in a poverty trap with too much inequality the development stops prematurely

advertising and us alcoholic beverage demand system wide estimates the effects of advertising on consumption of alcoholic beverages in the us are analysed the goal is to obtain evidence on the importance of advertising at the level of beverage demand beer wine spirits and for total consumption of alcohol per capita gallons of ethanol a three equation conditional demand system is estimated that includes own and cros beverage advertising as explanatory variables four models of the differential demand system are estimated including the rotterdam aid cbs and nbr models using annual us data for the period 1964 90 on beverage consumption prices expednitures and real advertising estimates are obtained of the complete matrix of own and cross elascities for each beverage price and advertising at the beverage level the results indicate a positive butr very small effect of advertising on beverage consumption with most of the impact due to wine advertising and non due to beer advertising there is no efect of advertising in the composite demand function for al

examining carbon emissions economic growth nexus for india a multivariate cointegration approach abstract the study probes cointegration and causality between carbon emissions and economic growth for india using ardl bounds testing approach complemented by johansen juselius maximum likelihood procedure in a multivariate framework by incorporating energy supply investment and employment for time span 1971 2006 the study fails to establish long run equilibrium relationship and long term causality between carbon emissions and economic growth however there exists a bi directional short run causality between the two hence in the short run any effort to reduce carbon emissions could lead to a fall in the national income this study also establishes unidirectional short run causality running from economic growth to energy supply and energy supply to carbon emissions the absence of causality running from energy supply to economic growth implies that in india energy conservation and energy efficiency measures can be implemented to minimize the wastage of energy across value chain such measures would narrow energy demand supply gap absence of long run causality between carbon emissions and economic growth implies that in the long run focus should be given on harnessing energy from clean sources to curb carbon emissions which would not affect the country s economic growth

carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth an aggregate and disaggregate analysis of the indian economy abstract this study investigates the long and short run relationships among carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth in india at the aggregated and disaggregated levels during 1971 2014 the autoregressive distributed lag model is employed for the cointegration analyses and the vector error correction model is applied to determine the direction of causality between variables results show that a long run cointegration relationship exists and that the environmental kuznets curve is validated at the aggregated and disaggregated levels furthermore energy total energy gas oil electricity and coal consumption has a positive relationship with carbon emissions and a feedback effect exists between economic growth and carbon emissions thus energy efficient technologies should be used in domestic production to mitigate carbon emissions at the aggregated and disaggregated levels the present study provides policy makers with new directions in drafting comprehensive policies with lasting impacts on the economy energy consumption and environment towards sustainable development

big bad banks the winners and losers from bank deregulation in the united states we assess the impact of bank deregulation on the distribution of income in the united states from the 1970s through the 1990s most states removed restrictions on intrastate branching which intensified bank competition and improved bank performance exploiting the cross state cross time variation in the timing of branch deregulation we find that deregulation materially tightened the distribution of income by boosting incomes in the lower part of the income distribution while having little impact on incomes above the median bank deregulation tightened the distribution of income by increasing the relative wage rates and working hours of unskilled workers

factor endowments inequality and paths of development among new world economies whereas traditional explanations of differences in long run paths of development across the americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth human capital and political power in accounting for how fundamental economic institutions evolved over time we argue moreover that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay in differences in the initial factor endowments dating back to the era of european colonization we document through comparative studies of suffrage public land and schooling policies systematic patterns by which societies in the americas that began with more extreme inequality or heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatly advantaged members of elite classes and disadvantaging the bulk of the population by providing them with more political influence and access to economic opportunities the clear implication is that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous economists need to learn more about where they come from to understand their relation to economic development our findings not only contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality across new world economies have persisted for centuries but also to the study of processes of long run economic growth past and present

causality between energy consumption and economic growth in india a note on conflicting results abstract this note examines the different direction of causal relation between energy consumption and economic growth in india applying engle granger cointegration approach combined with the standard granger causality test on indian data for the period 1950 1996 we find that bi directional causality exists between energy consumption and economic growth further we apply johansen multivariate cointegration technique on the different set of variables the same direction of causality exists between energy consumption and economic growth this is different from the results obtained in earlier studies

dynamic modeling of causal relationship between energy consumption co2 emissions and economic growth in india abstract the paper investigates the causality relationships among energy consumption carbon dioxide co2 emissions and income in india using a dynamic modeling approach the paper also utilises an innovation accounting method to investigate profiles of the macroeconomic variables persisting from an unanticipated shock in innovation our results provide evidence of the existence of bi directional granger causality between energy consumption and co2 emissions in the long run but neither co2 emissions nor energy consumption causes movements in real income there is no causality relationship between energy consumption and income in any direction in the long run implying that india could follow energy conservation and efficiency improvement policies without impeding economic growth this will allow india to reduce co2 emissions without affecting its economic growth and contribute significantly towards combating global warming as well

changing business dynamism and productivity shocks vs responsiveness the pace of job reallocation has declined in the united states in recent decades we draw insight from canonical models of business dynamics in which reallocation can decline due to i lower dispersion of idiosyncratic shocks faced by businesses or ii weaker marginal responsiveness of businesses to shocks we show that shock dispersion has actually risen while the responsiveness of business level employment to productivity has weakened moreover declining responsiveness can account for a significant fraction of the decline in the pace of job reallocation and we find suggestive evidence this has been a drag on aggregate productivity

does religion matter in corporate decision making in america abstract we examine how corporate culture influences firm behavior prior research suggests a link between individual religiosity and risk aversion we find that this relationship also influences organizational behavior firms located in counties with higher levels of religiosity display lower degrees of risk exposure as measured by variances in equity returns or returns on assets they exhibit a lower investment rate and less growth but generate a more positive market reaction when they announce new investments finally chief executive officers are more likely to join a firm with a similar religious environment as in their previous firm when they switch employers

electricity consumption and economic growth in nigeria a revisit of the energy growth debate abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal linkages between electricity consumption and economic growth in nigeria within a trivariate vecm for the period 1971 2011 the paper obviates the variable omission bias and the use of cross sectional techniques that characterise most existing studies the results show that there is a distinct causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth both in the short run and in the long run this finding supports the electricity led growth hypothesis that has been conjectured in the literature the paper urges policy makers in nigeria to implement policies which enhance the generation and consumption of electricity in order to engineer economic growth appropriate monetary policies must also be put in place in order to moderate inflation thus enhancing growth

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

electricity consumption and economic growth evidence from turkey abstract this study investigates the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp in turkey during the period of 1950 2000 both of the series were found to be a stationary process around a structural break by the zivot and andrews test thus two different methodologies have been employed to test the granger non causality the dolado lutkepohl test using the vars in levels and the standard granger causality test using the detrended data both tests have yielded a strong evidence for unidirectional causality running from the electricity consumption to the income this implies that the supply of electricity is vitally important to meet the growing electricity consumption hence to sustain the economic growth in turkey

inequality does cause underdevelopment insights from a new instrument consistent with the provocative hypothesis of engerman and sokoloff 1997 2000 this paper confirms with cross country data that agricultural endowments predict inequality and inequality predicts development the use of agricultural endowments specifically the abundance of land suitable for growing wheat relative to that suitable for growing sugarcane as an instrument for inequality is this paper s approach to problems of measurement and endogeneity of inequality the paper finds inequality also affects other development outcomes institutions and schooling which the literature has emphasized as mechanisms by which higher inequality lowers per capita income it tests the inequality hypothesis for development institutional quality and schooling against other recent hypotheses in the literature while finding some evidence consistent with other development fundamentals the paper finds high inequality to independently be a large and statistically significant barrier to prosperity good quality institutions and high schooling

electricity consumption from renewable and non renewable sources and economic growth evidence from latin american countries abstract this study explores the effect of renewable and non renewable electricity consumption on economic growth in 18 latin american countries to achieve the goal of this study a panel gross domestic product gdp model was constructed taking the period 1980 2010 into account from the pedroni cointegration test results it was found that renewable electricity consumption non renewable electricity consumption labor gross fixed capital formation and total trade are cointegrated moreover the panel dynamic ordinary least squares dols test results revealed that all above the mentioned variables have a long run positive effect on gdp growth in the investigated countries the vector error correction vec granger causality model results revealed the existence of feedback causality between the variables the results of the study indicated that renewable electricity consumption is more significant than non renewable electricity consumption in promoting economic growth in the investigated countries in the long run and the short run based on the results of this study it is recommended that the investigated countries should increase their investment on renewable energy projects to increase the role of electricity consumption from renewable sources in addition it is essential that these countries should reduce their non renewable electricity consumption by increasing their energy efficiency and implementing energy saving projects by applying these recommendations these countries would be able to mitigate global warming and reduce their dependency on fossil fuel to increase their energy security

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

corruption income and the environment an empirical analysis abstract in response to the recent growth of a largely theoretical body of literature analysing the linkages between corruption and pollution this paper subjects the corruption pollution relationship to a detailed empirical examination a distinction is drawn between the direct impact of corruption on pollution and the indirect impact which operates through corruption s impact on per capita income and the resultant impact of income on pollution using data for 94 countries covering the period 1987 2000 both direct and indirect impacts of corruption on air pollution emissions are estimated for both sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide corruption is estimated to have a positive direct impact on per capita emissions indirect effects are found to be negative and larger in absolute value than direct effects for the majority of the sample income range as a result the total effect of corruption on emissions is negative for all but the highest income countries in the sample

the injustice of inequality in many countries the operation of legal political and regulatory institutions is subverted by the wealthy and the politically powerful for their own benefit this subversion takes the form of corruption intimidation and other forms of influence we present a model of such institutional subversion focusing specifically on courts and of the effects of inequality in economic and political resources on the magnitude of subversion we then use the model to analyze the consequences of institutional subversion for the law and order environment in the country as well as for capital accumulation and growth we illustrate the model with historical evidence from gilded age united states and the transition economies of the 1990s we also present some cross country evidence consistent with the basic prediction of the model

trivariate causality between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption in angola cointegration and causality analysis abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption in the case of angola while utilizing the data over the period of 1971 2009 we have applied lee and strazicich 2003 the review of economics and statistics 63 1082 1089 2004 working paper department of economics appalachian state university unit root tests to examine the stationarity properties of the series using the gregory hansen structural break cointegration procedure as a complement we employ the ardl bounds test to investigate long run relationships the vecm granger causality test is subsequently used to examine the direction of causality between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption our results indicate the existence of long run relationships we further observe evidence in favour of bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth the feedback hypothesis is also found between urbanisation and economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption granger cause each other we conclude that angola is energy dependent country consequently the relevant authorities should boost electricity production as one of the means of achieving sustainable economic development in the long run

electricity consumption and economic growth in india abstract this paper tries to examine the granger causality between electricity consumption per capita and gross domestic product gdp per capita for india using annual data covering the period 1950 51 to 1996 97 phillips perron tests reveal that both the series after logarithmic transformation are non stationary and individually integrated of order one this study finds the absence of long run equilibrium relationship among the variables but there exists unidirectional granger causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption without any feedback effect so electricity conservation policies can be initiated without deteriorating economic side effects

co2 emissions energy consumption economic and population growth in malaysia abstract this study investigates the dynamic impacts of gdp growth energy consumption and population growth on co2 emissions using econometric approaches for malaysia empirical results from ardl bounds testing approach show that over the period of 1970 1980 per capita co2 emissions decreased with increasing per capita gdp economic growth however from 1980 to 2009 per capita co2 emissions increased sharply with a further increase of per capita gdp this is also supported by the dynamic ordinary least squared dols and the sasabuchi lind mehlum u slm u test tests consequently the hypothesis of the ekc is not valid in malaysia during the study period the results also demonstrate that both per capita energy consumption and per capita gdp has a long term positive impacts with per capita carbon emissions but population growth rate has no significant impacts on per capita co2 emission however the study suggests that in the long run economic growth may have an adverse effect on the co2 emissions in malaysia thus significant transformation of low carbon technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency could contribute to reduce the emissions and sustain the long run economic growth

does finance alter the relation between inequality and growth this paper introduces a model in which greater inequality reduces growth in economies with low levels of financial development but that this effect is attenuated in economies with more developed systems the model also predicts that individuals in economies with developed financial markets have a higher tolerance to inequality using a panel dataset that covers a large number of countries this paper shows empirical evidence that is consistent with the main predictions of the model overall this paper s major findings highlight that some of the pernicious effects of inequality can be attenuated by improving access to credit jel d3 e6 p1 o4 i2

energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in china abstract this paper investigates the existence and direction of granger causality between economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in china applying a multivariate model of economic growth energy use carbon emissions capital and urban population empirical results for china over the period 1960 2007 suggest a unidirectional granger causality running from gdp to energy consumption and a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to carbon emissions in the long run evidence shows that neither carbon emissions nor energy consumption leads economic growth therefore the government of china can purse conservative energy policy and carbon emissions reduction policy in the long run without impeding economic growth

reassessing the environmental kuznets curve for co2 emissions a robustness exercise the number of studies seeking to empirically characterize the reduced form relationship between a country economic growth and the quantity of pollutants produced in the process has recently increased significantly in several cases researchers have found evidence pointing to an inverted u benvironmental kuznetsq curve in the case of co2 however the evidence is at best mixed in this paper we reconsider that evidence by assessing how robust it is when the analysis is conducted in a different parametric setup and when using alternative emissions data from the international energy agency relative to the literature our contribution can be viewed as a robustness exercise in these two respects the econometric results lead to two conclusions firstly published evidence on the ekc does not appear to depend upon the source of the data at least as far as carbon dioxide is concerned secondly when an alternative functional form is employed there is evidence of an inverted u pattern for the group of oecd countries with reasonable turning point regardless of the data set employed not so for non oecd countries as the ekc is basically increasing slowly concave according to the iea data and more bellshaped in the case of cdiac data d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the matrix approach to evaluating demand equations as there is a plethora of demand models which one should be used to estimate income and price elasticities the paper sheds light on this important practical problem by developing a matrix approach to simulating mas demand equations to analyse their performance under idealized circumstances artificial data on the dependent variable are generated by one model and these are then used for the estimation of another model as an illustrative application using four popular models a 4 4 matrix is generated which gives all pair wise comparisons the performance of the models is then evaluated on the basis of the quality of the income and own price elasticity estimates

the effect of succession taxes on family firm investment evidence from a natural experiment this paper provides causal evidence on the impact of succession taxes on firm investment decisions and transfer of control using a 2002 policy change in greece that substantially reduced the tax on intrafamily transfers of businesses i show that succession taxes lead to a more than 40 decline in investment around family successions slow sales growth and a depletion of cash reserves furthermore succession taxes strongly affect the decision to sell or retain the firm within the family i conclude by discussing implications of my findings for firms in the united states and europe

a theory of trickle down growth and development this paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets and it analyses the trickle down effect of capital accumulation moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities three main conclusions are obtained from this model first when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution second even though the trickle down mechanism can lead to a unique steady state distribution under laissez faire there is room for government intervention in particular redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle down process third the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them in other words this model can generate a kuznets curve

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

wealth inequality in the united states since 1913 evidence from capitalized income tax data this paper combines income tax returns with flow of funds data to estimate the distribution of household wealth in the united states since 1913 we estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income we successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth the survey of consumer finance linked estate and income tax returns and foundations tax records wealth concentration has followed a u shaped evolution over the last 100 years it was high in the beginning of the twentieth century fell from 1929 to 1978 and has continuously increased since then the rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0 1 wealth share from 7 in 1979 to 22 in 2012 a level almost as high as in 1929 the bottom 90 wealth share rst increased up to the mid 1980s and then steadily declined the increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality top wealth holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of total labor income in the economy we explain how our ndings can be reconciled with survey of consumer finances and estate tax data

household inequality entrepreneurial dynamism and corporate financing economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism to empirically investigate its impact we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents home equity and 1880 farmland we identify its effects on entrepreneurship by instrumenting it with land distribution under the 1862 homestead act or us states removal of death taxes wealth inequality decreases firm entry and exit and the proportion of high tech businesses across metropolitan statistical areas there is also less redistribution into public goods supportive of entrepreneurship such as schooling and the judiciary income per capita consequently grows more slowly

does local financial development matter we study the effects of differences in local financial development within an integrated financial market we construct a new indicator of financial development by estimating a regional effect on the probability that ceteris paribus a household is shut off from the credit market by using this indicator we find that financial development enhances the probability an individual starts his own business favors entry of new firms increases competition and promotes growth as predicted by theory these effects are weaker for larger firms which can more easily raise funds outside of the local area these effects are present even when we instrument our indicator with the structure of the local banking markets in 1936 which because of regulatory reasons affected the supply of credit in the following 50 years overall the results suggest local financial development is an important determinant of the economic success of an area even in an environment where there are no frictions to capital movements

disaggregate energy consumption and industrial production in south africa abstract this paper tries to assess the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial output in south africa by undertaking a cointegration analysis using annual data from 1980 to 2005 we also investigate the causal relationships between the various disaggregate forms of energy consumption and industrial production our results imply that industrial production and employment are long run forcing variables for electricity consumption applying the toda h y yamamoto t 1995 statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated processes journal of econometrics 66 225 250 technique to granger causality we find bi directional causality between oil consumption and industrial production for the other forms of energy consumption there is evidence in support of the energy neutrality hypothesis there is also evidence of causality between employment and electricity consumption as well as coal consumption causing employment