submarkets and the evolution of market structure we construct a model of industry evolution in which the central force for change is the creation and destruction of submarkets firms expand when they are able to exploit new opportunities that arrive in the form of submarkets they contract and ultimately exit when the submarkets in which they operate are destroyed this simple framework can transparently explain a wide range of well known regularities about industry dynamics most notably the subtle relationships between size age growth and survival data on the laser industry where submarkets are prominent further illustrate the ability of the model to explain distinctive patterns in the evolution of industries and firms

intertemporal labor supply and human capital accumulation we solve and estimate a dynamic model that allows agents to optimally choose their labor hours and consumption and that allows for both human capital accumulation and savings estimation results and simulation exercises indicate that the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is much higher than the conventional estimates and the downward bias comes from the omission of the human capital accumulation effect the human capital accumulation effect renders the life cycle path of the shadow wage relatively flat even though wages increase with age hence a rather flat life cycle labor supply path can be reconciled with a high intertemporal elasticity of substitution

entry into pharmaceutical submarkets a bayesian panel probit analysis summary we study entry into pharmaceutical submarkets by using a dynamic panel probit model we develop a bayesian version of wooldridge s approach to dealing with unobserved heterogeneity we distinguish between greenfield entry entry with first product and undifferentiated entry which may take the form of introducing further products we extend the standard reduced form model to consider company size in the submarket and across all submarkets we find that greenfield and undifferentiated entries have different determinants that global and submarket size measures have different effects and that sunk costs often have positive effects on entry due to a commitment mechanism copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

dismantling the relationship between energy innovations and power abstract dominant conceptual models describe energy innovations as struggles between regime and niche actors that develop at the margins of established energy systems and work against dominant energy regimes contrary to this conceptualisation this paper argues that energy innovations develop through a more nuanced set of relationships which lead to distinct innovation outcomes based on three case studies in germany and scotland this paper finds that energy innovations develop in accordance with independent of or in opposition to regime structures showing that a project s relative position within these structures influences the type and quality of its development making use of situational analysis the paper challenges essentialising tendencies among scholars working with the multi level perspective instead of understanding regime and niche as separable entities situational analysis allows understanding how agency and innovations of local renewable energy projects transcend the boundaries of levels or systems policy makers are advised to acknowledge these complex interrelations side effects of policies deliberately directed towards other sectors might have significant effects on the energy sector

economic policy and equality of opportunity we employ eop definitions that have appeared in the philosophical literature on distributive justice and apply it to a formal economic model which incorporates human capital investment and luck within and across generations the human capital acquisition technology features multiple stages of parental investments during childhood and on the job investments in adulthood the benchmark model features an intergenerational borrowing constraint education and low income subsidies which are financed by a progressive income tax the model is calibrated to the u s in 1990 on which we operationalize philosophical concepts by using the children s continuation values as outcomes and the state space of the recursive decision problem as circumstances this reveals that intergenerational investments should be accounted for when comparing measures of eop when conditioning on parental luck instead of outcomes eop looks much larger luck is overwhelmed by human capital accumulation in contrast when looking at children s net wealth instead of lifetime earnings eop looks worse intergenerational borrowing constraints are more pronounced in wealth than in earnings in counterfactual experiments we find that education subsidies increase utilitarian welfare and decrease overall inequality but does little to promote eop this is for two reasons when one takes the view that intergenerational efforts should be rewarded there is little room for improvement in eop to begin with on the other hand when one takes the view that intergenerational efforts should not be rewarded much stronger redistribution is needed for the policies to have a quantitative impact

local acceptance of renewable energy a case study from southeast germany the european 20 20 20 goals as well as national targets for the next decade require a substantial increase in installed renewable capacity in germany while public support for such measures is high on an abstract level the situation in the local context is often very different here the impact of renewable energy might cause resistance empirical research shows that a community ownership model can have a positive effect on local acceptance our study explores whether such an effect can also be demonstrated in a community co ownership model the question is relevant since larger projects exceed the financial possibilities of most communities leaving them with only co ownership as an option the research design is based on a comparative case study utilizing a questionnaire based survey the results of the survey clearly show that a significant difference in local acceptance exists between the two cases the residents of zschadras where a community co ownership model exists are consistently more positive towards local renewable energy and also towards renewable energy in general the results provide evidence that the co ownership model is a means to reconcile local acceptance with an increased use of renewable energy in germany

wealth distribution in life cycle economies abstract this paper compares the age wealth distribution produced in life cycle economies to the corresponding distribution in the us economy the idea is to calibrate the model economies to match features of the us earnings distribution and then examine the wealth distribution implications of the model economies the findings are that the calibrated model economies with earnings and lifetime uncertainty can replicate measures of both aggregate wealth and transfer wealth in the us furthermore the model economies produce the us wealth gini and a significant fraction of the wealth inequality within age groups however the model economies produce less than half the fraction of wealth held by the top 1 percent of us households

a new method of estimating risk aversion i show existing evidence on labor supply behavior places an upper bound on risk aversion in the expected utility model i derive a formula for the coefficient of relative risk aversion in terms of the ratio of the income elasticity of labor supply to wage elasticity and degree of complementarity between consumption and labor i bound the degree of complementarity using data on consumption choices when labor supply varies across states using labor supply elasticity estimates i find a mean estimate of 1 then show generating 2 requires that wage increases cause sharper labor supply reductions jel d81 j22

energy transition poverty and inequality in vietnam this paper investigates energy transition energy poverty and energy inequality in vietnam employing a longitudinal dataset of a nationally representative household survey we use the data on residential energy expenditure of more than 9 000 households over the period 2004 2016 we find a transition from traditional energy to modern energy but this transition varies across regions between ethnic and welfare groups and between rural and urban population the poor and ethnic minority households still rely heavily on traditional energy sources such as coal and biomass to meet their energy demands electricity poverty has decreased but energy cost poverty has increased in addition energy inequality tends to decrease at a more significant rate than income and consumption inequalities we propose a national program for energy poverty alleviation be established to devise policies to lower households energy costs further assistance to the poor and ethnic minority households is also recommended so that they can afford a higher level of electricity consumption

identifying barriers toward a post growth economy a political economy view abstract in this paper we take a political economy perspective on barriers that inhibit a transition beyond the growth paradigm that is we frame transition barriers as looming conflicts of interest specifically we investigate potential transition barriers within three case studies first unemployment represents the most commonly cited reason why economic growth is considered indispensable second alternative indicators to gross domestic product gdp have not succeeded in replacing gdp as a standard metric of economic welfare third pension schemes rely on economic growth to offset demographic change in each of these three examples we identify actor interest constellations that foster the status quo of a growth economy we conclude that compensating some of those actors who would presumably be worse off in a post growth economy may be necessary though not sufficient for a transition

a theory of market pioneers dynamic capabilities and industry evolution we analyze a model of industry evolution where the number of active submarkets is endogenously determined by pioneering innovation from incumbents and entrants incumbent pioneers enjoy an advantage of additional pioneering innovation via a dynamic capability that takes the form of an improved technology for innovation in young submarkets entrants are motivated in part by a desire to acquire the dynamic capability we show that dynamic capabilities increase total innovation but whether the capability confers an advantage in terms of marginal or average cost is important in determining how the impact of dynamic capabilities is distributed across incumbent and entrant innovation rates we complement the existing literature that focuses on exogenous arrival of submarkets or the steady state of a model with constant submarkets by describing how competition free entry and the dynamic capability of incumbents drive the evolution of an industry the shift from immature to mature submarkets can lead to a shakeout in firm numbers and it eventually leads to a reduction in total dynamic capabilities in an industry this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

using elasticities to derive optimal income tax rates this paper derives optimal income tax formulas using compensated and uncompensated elasticities of earnings with respect to tax rates a simple formula for the high income optimal tax rate is obtained as a function of these elasticities and the thickness of the top tail of the income distribution in the general non linear income tax problem this method using elasticities shows precisely how the different economic effects come into play and which are the key relevant parameters in the optimal income tax formulas of mirrlees the optimal non linear tax rate formulas are expressed in terms of elasticities and the shape of the income distribution these formulas are implemented numerically using empirical earning distributions and a range of realistic elasticity parameters

gradual tax reforms if you like it you can keep it abstract one of the key practical challenges facing by tax reforms are their short run welfare consequences in this paper i focus on a consumption based tax reform for which despite long run welfare gains it generates welfare for some groups such as retirees or the working poor falls during transition between steady states using a life cycle model with heterogeneous households i show how to devise a transition path from the current u s federal tax system to a consumption based tax system that improves the welfare of current as well as future generations in a nutshell all households alive at the time of the policy change can choose when they want to switch to the new tax system or whether they want to switch at all i find that implementing a tax reform with this feature improves the welfare of 95 of population in the short run compared to less than a quarter of population in the conventional case with no choice it takes about twenty years for half of the population to pay their taxes under the new tax code

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

sources of lifetime inequality is lifetime inequality mainly due to differences across people established early in life or to differences in luck experienced over the working lifetime we answer this question within a model that features idiosyncratic shocks to human capital estimated directly from data as well as heterogeneity in ability to learn initial human capital and initial wealth we find that as of age 23 differences in initial conditions account for more of the variation in lifetime earnings lifetime wealth and lifetime utility than do differences in shocks received over the working lifetime jel d31 d91 j24 j31 to what degree is lifetime inequality due to differences across people established early in life as opposed to differences in luck experienced over the working lifetime among the individual differences established early in life which ones are the most important a convincing answer to these questions is of fundamental importance first and most simply an answer serves to contrast the potential importance of the myriad policies directed at modifying or at providing insurance for initial conditions e g public education against those directed at shocks over the working lifetime e g unemployment insurance second a discussion of lifetime inequality cannot go too far before discussing which specific type of initial condition is the most critical for determining how one fares in life third a useful framework for answering these questions should also be central in the analysis of a wide range of policies considered in macroeconomics public finance and labor economics we view lifetime inequality through the lens of a risky human capital model agents differ in terms of three initial conditions initial human capital learning ability and financial wealth initial human capital can be viewed as controlling the intercept of an agent s mean earnings profile whereas learning ability acts to rotate

the evolution of wealth inequality over half a century the role of taxes transfers and technology over the last 50 years the u s tax system went through a striking transformation that reduced the effective tax rates for top income groups and raised transfers to seniors this paper investigates the macroeconomic repercussions of this change in policy particularly for the distributions of income wealth and consumption changes in taxes and transfers account for nearly half of the rise in wealth concentration nonetheless their impact on the distributions of income and consumption has been minor due to changes in equilibrium prices and the offsetting effects of tax cuts and transfers on the dispersion of consumption results highlight the role of increasing wage dispersion during this period as the main driver of trends in inequality

redistribution and social insurance we study optimal redistribution and insurance in a life cycle economy with private idiosyncratic shocks we characterize pareto optima show the forces determining optimal labor distortions and derive closed form expressions for their limiting behavior the labor distortions for high productivity shocks are determined by the labor elasticity and the higher moments of the shock process the labor distortions for low productivity shocks are determined by the autocorrelation of the shock process redistributive objectives and past distortions in a model calibrated using newly available estimates of idiosyncratic shocks the labor distortions are u shaped and the savings distortions generally increase in current earnings jel d82 d91 h21 h23 i38 j22 j24

heterogeneity and government revenues higher taxes at the top abstract how effective is a more progressive tax scheme in raising revenues we answer this question in a life cycle economy with heterogeneity across households and endogenous labor supply our findings show that a tilt of the u s income tax schedule towards high earners leads to small increases in revenue maximal revenue in the long run is only 6 8 higher than in our benchmark about 0 8 of initial gdp while revenues from all sources increase by just about 0 6 our conclusions are that policy recommendations of this sort are misguided if the aim is to exclusively raise government revenue

marginal tax rates and income new time series evidence this paper estimates the dynamic effects of marginal tax rate changes on income reported on tax returns in the united states over the 1950 2010 period after isolating exogenous variation in average marginal tax rates in structural vector autoregressions using a narrative identification approach i find large positive effects of tax cuts in the top 1 of the income distribution in contrast to earlier findings based on tax return data i also find large effects in other income percentile brackets a hypothetical tax reform cutting marginal rates only for the top 1 leads to sizeable increases in top 1 incomes and has a positive effect on real gdp there are also spillover effects to incomes outside of the top 1 but top marginal rate cuts lead to greater inequality in pre tax incomes

the relevance of attitudinal factors for the acceptance of energy policy measures a micro econometric analysis abstract this paper empirically examines the individual support of the german energy transition in total and especially of six single energy policy measures which are components of the energy transition our micro econometric analysis with binary and ordered probit models on the basis of data from a broad survey of citizens reveals the important role of several attitudinal factors with respect to our indicators for perceived personal costs of the energy transition the estimation results point to a weak evidence for economic self interest due to some negative correlations between expected energy price increases due to the energy transition and the support of single energy policy measures interestingly however the concern that the energy transition alone causes strong energy price increases is not shared by the majority of the respondents the estimation results also suggest that the support of several energy policy measures is strongly correlated with environmental values however the most important attitudinal factor is obviously political identification the econometric analysis suggests that an overall left green policy identification is positively correlated with the support of the energy transition in total and an identification with ecological policy is positively correlated with the acceptance of several single energy policy measures the econometric analysis especially supports the more sophisticated categorization of political orientation since for example a liberal conservative policy orientation is not significantly correlated with the support of the energy transition in total

micro and macro labor supply elasticities a reassessment of conventional wisdom the response of aggregate labor supply to various changes in the economic environ ment is central to many economic issues especially the optimal design of tax policies conventional wisdom based on studies in the 1980s and 1990s has long held that the analysis of micro data leads one to conclude that aggregate labor supply elasticities are quite small in this paper we argue that this conventional wisdom does not hold up to empirically reasonable and relevant extensions of simple life cycle models that served as the basis for these conclusions in particular we show that several pieces of conventional wisdom fail in the presence of human capital accumulation or labor supply decisions that allow for adjustment along both the extensive and intensive margin we conclude that previous estimates of small labor supply elasticities based on micro data are fully consistent with large aggregate labor supply elasticities jel d91 e24 j22

how well does the u s social insurance system provide social insurance we analyze the insurance provided by the u s social security and income tax system within a model in which agents receive idiosyncratic wage rate shocks that are privately observed we consider two reforms a piecemeal reform that optimally chooses the social security benefit function and a radical reform that eliminates the entire social insurance system and replaces it with an optimal tax on lifetime earnings the radical reform outperforms the piecemeal reform and achieves nearly all of the maximum possible welfare gain when wages differ permanently over the lifetime when wage shocks match properties in u s data the piecemeal reform outperforms the radical reform

taxing across borders tracking personal wealth and corporate profits globalization is making it increasingly easy for corporations to shift profits to low tax countries modern technology has also made it simpler for wealthy individuals to move funds to undeclared bank accounts in offshore tax havens both issues have featured prominently in the news and global economic debates since the financial crisis but the arguments tend to be based on relatively little empirical evidence measuring the costs of tax havens to foreign governments is fraught with difficulties however balance of payments data and corporate filings show that us companies are shifting profits to bermuda luxembourg and similar countries on a large and growing scale about 20 percent of all us corporate profits are now booked in such havens a tenfold increase since the 1980s this profit shifting is typically done within the letter of the law and thus would be best described as tax avoidance rather than fraud i attempt to quantify its cost for government coffers by taking a fresh look at the most recent macroeconomic evidence and combining it in a systematic manner over the last 15 years the effective corporate tax rate of us companies has declined from 30 to 20 percent and about two thirds of this decline can be attributed to increased profit shifting to low tax jurisdictions wealthy individuals too use tax havens sometimes legally to benefit from banking services not available in their home country and sometimes illegally to evade taxes a number of changes have sought with some success to curb that form of tax evasion over the last years yet the available evidence from switzerland and

the missing wealth of nations are europe and the u s net debtors or net creditors this paper shows that official statistics substantially underestimate the net foreign asset positions of rich countries because they fail to capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens drawing on systematic anomalies in portfolio investment positions and a unique swiss dataset i find that 8 of the global financial wealth of households is held in tax havens 6 of which goes unrecorded on the basis of plausible assumptions accounting for unrecorded assets turns the eurozone officially the world s second largest net debtor into a net creditor it also reduces the u s net debt significantly the results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor to rich capital flows external assets are now in poor countries and debts in rich countries i provide concrete proposals to improve international investment statistics

the german energy transition modeling competition and substitution between nuclear power and renewable energy technologies abstract this paper studies some quantitative aspects of the energy transition in germany the energiewende which envisages the complete abandonment of nuclear power and a strong reliance on photovoltaic and wind energy for electricity provision the major aim is to shed light on and measure with indirect tools the possible social effects on competition and substitution dynamics characterizing such transition in doing so an analysis on the innovation diffusion framework is proposed through the application of two diffusion models for a duopolistic competition unrestricted and standard ucrcd to the annual time series of consumption of nuclear and renewables wind and solar energy in germany in order to test empirically the presence of such substitution effect the obtained results confirm this conjecture and show that renewables have exerted a significant and measurable effect in determining the observed decline of nuclear power consumption in particular we find that the diffusion of renewables wind and solar is characterized by a high within word of mouth testifying the widespread belief of germans towards the energy transition while the parallel diffusion of nuclear power is characterized by a highly negative cross word of mouth due to the competing role exerted by renewables

security justice and the energy crossroads assessing the implications of the nuclear phase out in germany abstract the nuclear melt down in fukushima resulted in diverging energy policy decisions across the world where germany decided to opt out of nuclear electricity production yet the government s decision making framework for energy policy decisions does not accurately reflect important drivers for the strategy change this paper presents the energy crossroads framework as a more comprehensive tool to analyse the drivers and impacts of the nuclear phase out 20 expert interviews were performed across business participants as well as policy makers in the national and international energy context results show that germany has adopted an environmental justice rather than energy security stance in their nuclear phase out policy with significant long term consequences

taxation of human capital and wage inequality a cross country analysis wage inequality has been significantly higher in the united states than in continental european countries ceu since the 1970s moreover this inequality gap has further widened during this period as the us has experienced a large increase in wage inequality whereas the ceu has seen only modest changes this paper studies the role of labor income tax policies for understanding these facts we begin by documenting two new empirical facts that link these inequality differences to tax policies first we show that countries with more progressive labor income tax schedules have significantly lower before tax wage inequality at different points in time second progressivity is also negatively correlated with the rise in wage inequality during this period we then construct a life cycle model in which individuals decide each period whether to go to school work or be unemployed individuals can accumulate skills either in school or while working wage inequality arises from differences across individuals in their ability to learn new skills as well as from idiosyncratic shocks progressive taxation compresses the after tax wage structure thereby distorting the incentives to accumulate human capital in turn reducing the cross sectional dispersion of before tax wages we find that these policies can account for half of the difference between the us and the ceu in overall wage inequality and 76 of the difference in inequality at the upper end log 90 50 differential when this economy experiences skill biased technological change progressivity also dampens the rise in wage dispersion over time the model explains 41 of the difference in the total rise in inequality and 58 of the difference at the upper end

business models as drivers of the low carbon power system transition a multi level perspective abstract decarbonising the electrical power system holds a critical role in climate change mitigation recent developments in technology are helping change the current centralized paradigm into one of integrated distributed clean energy resources in spite of these developments radical transformation is not occurring at a speed to effectively meet environmental targets mostly due to the incumbent carbon lock in trajectory we argue that business model bm innovation dynamics are key drivers in accelerating the low carbon power system transition often operating irrespective of the underlying technology we combine bm theory with the multi level perspective on sociotechnical transitions to present a useful framework to analyze this potential transition this paper presents the application of this framework characterizing relevant bm dynamics of niche and regime business actors and supporting these with illustrative examples particularly we find that new actors in the distributed energy business are achieving market scale by offering financially innovative bms that do not require upfront costs from customers higher penetrations of renewable energy sources in liberalized electricity markets are destabilizing the historical bm of large centralized utilities through erosion of wholesale prices furthermore a shift towards distributed and dynamic energy resources further challenges incumbents and might bring opportunities for bms focused on active customer participation and social value creation as these tendencies are expected to accelerate we find analyses of bms will have important relevance for future power system transition research

optimal timing of decisions a general theory based on continuation values abstract by extending a methodology dating back to jovanovic 1982 we develop a comprehensive theory of optimal timing of decisions based on continuation value functions and operators that act on them rewards can be bounded or unbounded one advantage of this approach over standard bellman methods is that continuation value functions are smoother than value functions another is that for a range of problems the continuation value function exists in a lower dimensional space than the value function we exploit these advantages to obtain a range of new results on optimality optimal behavior and efficient computation

the rationale for energy efficiency policy assessing the recognition of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency retrofit policy the rationale for energy efficiency policy can be framed in terms of a variety of different benefits this paper considers how different benefits have been used within the overall rationale for energy efficient retrofit policy in different contexts we posit that different rationales may be used for the same policy response and that the form of rationale used may affect the design delivery or the level of policy support with different rationales making it easier to account for different results considering retrofit policy in the contexts of the uk germany new zealand and ireland we characterise policy rationale in each case assessing what the key perceived benefits have been and whether they have changed over time the analysis identifies some marked differences between cases with the recognition of benefits and the ensuing policy rationale resulting from a complex mix of political social and economic influences we find that recognition of multiple benefits may not equate with multiplied policy support and instead it is more likely that different rationales will have relevance at different times for different audiences the findings highlight that alongside evidence for policy it is important to also consider how the overall rationale for policy is eventually framed

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

labor supply and taxes a survey i survey the male and female labor supply literatures focusing on implications for effects of wages and taxes for males i describe and contrast results from three basic types of model static models especially those that account for nonlinear taxes life cycle models with savings and life cycle models with both savings and human capital for women more important distinctions are whether models include fixed costs of work and whether they treat demographics like fertility and marriage and human capital as exogenous or endogenous the literature is characterized by considerable controversy over the responsiveness of labor supply to changes in wages and taxes at least for males it is fair to say that most economists believe labor supply elasticities are small but a sizeable minority of studies that i examine obtain large values hence there is no clear consensus on this point in fact a simple average of hicks elasticities across all the studies i examine is 0 30 several simulation studies have shown that such a value is large enough to generate large welfare costs of income taxation for males i conclude that two factors drive many of the differences in results across studies one factor is use of direct vs ratio wage measures with studies that use the former tending to find larger elasticties another factor is the failure of most studies to account for human capital returns to work experience i argue that this may lead to downward bias in elasticity estimates in a model that includes human capital i show how even modest elasticities as conventionally measured can be consistent with large welfare costs of taxation

what can be learned from practical cases of green economy studies from five european countries the transition to green economies has been mediated by concrete cases and experiments in a variety of different industrial and social sectors what is lacking is research that would synthesize key findings and lessons learned across a variety of cases in this study we explore ten cases of green economy of different sectors and approaches from five european countries and identify factors that have had critical importance for the success or failure of the cases our paper reveals similarities across small and large scale cases and different approaches for implementing green economy we identified critical factors related to economic viability public funding technological development impact assessments public policies and regulation social capital leadership and coordination as well as public acceptability and image according to our results transition to green economies requires negotiation between potential trade offs among multiple goals and interests of various stakeholders the mutual benefits can be communicated through valid impact assessments and the integration of r d into the practical implementation securing the continuity of funding and leadership is crucial in successful experiments and attention should be paid to fostering social capital among stakeholders instead of any single critical factor the practical implementation of green economy is related to a multiplicity of factors and causalities depending on the context the challenges with the practical implementation of green economy can only be met with patient careful and far sighted planning of green economy initiatives as well as continuous learning from past experiences

diversification by entry into a new submarket using a dataset on the subsector and geographical segmentation of 208 pharmaceutical companies a bayesian panel probit is used to analyze the role of state dependency size and achieved diversification in affecting entry decision we properly account for unobservable heterogeneity in a context with nonstrictly exogenous regressors we find that achieved diversification measured by the number of submarkets already entered affects negatively the probability of entry beside some country specific exceptions size and the lagged dependent variable do not seem to be relevant

creative destruction or mere niche support innovation policy mixes for sustainability transitions recently there has been an increasing interest in policy mixes in innovation studies while it has long been acknowledged that the stimulation of innovation and technological change involves different types of policy instruments how such instruments form policy mixes has only recently become of interest we argue that an area in which policy mixes are particularly important is the field of sustainability transitions transitions imply not only the development of disruptive innovations but also of policies aiming for wider change in socio technical systems we propose that ideally policy mixes for transitions include elements of creative destruction involving both policies aiming for the creation of new and for destabilising the old we develop a novel analytical framework including the two policy mix dimensions creation and destruction by broadening the technological innovation system functions approach and specifically by expanding the concept of motors of innovation to motors of creative destruction we test this framework by analysing low energy policy mixes in finland and the uk we find that both countries have diverse policy mixes to support energy efficiency and reduce energy demand with instruments to cover all functions on the creation side despite the demonstrated need for such policies unsurprisingly destabilising functions are addressed by fewer policies but there are empirical examples of such policies in both countries the concept of motors of creative destruction is introduced to expand innovation and technology policy debates to go beyond policy mixes consisting of technology push and demand pull instruments and to consider a wider range of policy instruments combined in a suitable mix which may contribute to sustainability transitions

advocates or cartographers scientific advisors and the narratives of german energy transition abstract political debate on energy in germany has been shaped by two historically opposed discourses one pushing for a transition to renewables the other holding on to the status quo scientific policy advice spa has been involved in their evolution from the beginning this paper draws on the advocacy coalition framework and on discourse and narrative theory to study the role of spa in recent german energy policy we explore 1 whether scientific advisors have been members of advocacy coalitions and 2 how their contributions may have interacted with the evolution of the discourses and major narratives we perform a qualitative text analysis of 50 spa reports published between 2000 and 2015 we find that the majority of studies clearly take sides in the debate and that in most cases the reports positions are fully transparent despite the polarization spa provides differentiated information on key aspects of the discourses and alternative design options for policy instruments we conclude that spa contributions have improved the conditions for political consensus and compromise collectively spa studies provide a basis for mapping different policy pathways and their consequences in the future spa should address additional critical issues such as coal phase out and international leadership

how should tax progressivity respond to rising income inequality we address this question in a heterogeneous agent incomplete markets model featuring exogenous idiosyncratic risk endogenous skill investment and flexible labor supply the tax and transfer schedule is restricted to be log linear in income a good description of the us system rising inequality is modeled as a combination of skill biased technical change and growth in residual wage dispersion when facing shifts in the income distribution like those observed in the us a utilitarian planner chooses higher progressivity in response to larger residual inequality but lower progressivity in response to widening skill price dispersion reflecting technical change overall optimal progressivity is approximately unchanged between 1980 and 2016 we document that the progressivity of the actual us tax and transfer system has similarly changed little since 1980 in line with the model prescription

impacts of renewable energy consumption on the german economic growth evidence from combined cointegration test abstract germany is the largest economy in europe and the leading renewable energy user comparable to none in the entire of the european continents it is in reference to these developments that this study investigates whether the impacts of renewable energy have consolidated the economic growth prospects of the country to ensure this quarterly time series data from 1971q1 to 2013qiv was used the study employed the clemente montanes reyes detrended structural break test the bayer hanck combined cointegration test and the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration in addition the causality analysis was observed using vecm granger causality framework the results confirmed the existence of cointegration among the variables the results show that renewable energy consumption in germany consolidates the country s economic growth prospects to the extend that a 1 increase in renewable energy consumption boosts german economic growth by 0 2194 in addition to that a 1 increase in capital lead to the rise in economic growth by 1 1320 while a 0 5125 increase in economic growth is due to 1 increase in labor productivity the causality analysis on the other hand revealed the existence of feedback effect between renewable energy consumption and economic growth while the relationship between renewable energy consumption and capital is found to be bidirectional and same inference was found to exist between capital and economic growth the study proposes solid mechanisms that will help in averting renewable energy market failure locally and internationally among others

the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates a critical review this paper critically surveys the large and growing literature estimating the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates using tax return data first we provide a theoretical framework showing under what assumptions this elasticity can be used as a sufficient statistic for efficiency and optimal tax analysis we discuss what other parameters should be estimated when the elasticity is not a sufficient statistic second we discuss conceptually the key issues that arise in the empirical estimation of the elasticity of taxable income using the example of the 1993 top individual income tax rate increase in the united states to illustrate those issues third we provide a critical discussion of selected empirical analyses of the elasticity of taxable income in light of the theoretical and empirical framework we laid out finally we discuss avenues for future research jel h24 h31 j22

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

rational inattention and organizational focus this paper studies optimal communication flows in organizations a production process can be coordinated ex ante by letting agents stick to a prespecified plan of action alternatively agents may adapt to task specific shocks in which case tasks must be coordinated ex post using communication when attention is scarce an optimal organization coordinates only a few tasks ex post those tasks are higher performing more adaptive to the environment and influential hence scarce attention requires setting priorities not just local optimization our results provide microfoundations for a central idea in the management literature that firms should focus on a limited set of core competencies

social business hybrids demand externalities competitive advantage and growth through diversification organization scholars have recently studied the internal challenges and opportunities faced by companies that combine business and social logics i e social business hybrids by adopting a demand side perspective this paper addresses the implications of hybridity for strategic choices with products and businesses by focusing on the role of social business hybrids customers in the conceptual framework social identity theory explains how hybridity generates both positive and negative demand side externalities thus hybridity can be a source of competitive advantage in the marketplace but also create hurdles to firms ability to scale up their business diversification represents a potential choice that simultaneously generates growth preserves hybridity and avoids negative demand side externalities this paper analyzes the optimal type timing and scope of such diversification

on the optimal provision of social insurance progressive taxation versus education subsidies in general equilibrium in this paper we compute the optimal tax and education policy transition in an economy where progressive taxes provide social insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk but distort the education decision of households optimally chosen tertiary education subsidies mitigate these distortions we highlight the quantitative importance of general equilibrium feedback effects from policies to relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers subsidizing higher education increases the share of workers with a college degree thereby reducing the college wage premium which has important redistributive benefits we also argue that a full characterization of the transition path is crucial for policy evaluation we find that optimal education policies are always characterized by generous tuition subsidies but the optimal degree of income tax progressivity depends crucially on whether transitional costs of policies are explicitly taken into account and how strongly the college premium responds to policy changes in general equilibrium

regime shifts and management regime shifts are substantial reorganizations in system structure functions and feedbacks which can lead to changes in the provision of ecosystem services with significant impacts on human well being recent research has documented cases of regime shifts in local and regional systems and there is mounting concern about regime shifts of global significance in this paper we discuss management of social ecological systems in light of the potential for regime shift management that increases system resilience and lowers the probability of regime shifts is beneficial when regime shifts are likely to reduce human well being it may not always be possible to avoid harmful regime shifts so building capacity to adapt should a regime shift occur is beneficial too adaptive management can help reduce uncertainty about the likelihood of regime shifts how this likelihood can be affected by management action and the impact of regime shifts on well being linking scientific understanding with decision making is important but distributional consequences can impede decision making and action

intertemporal substitution in labor supply evidence from micro data the sensitivity of the supply of labor to intertemporal variation in the wage is an important issue in macroeconomics the analysis of social security and pensions and the study of life cycle patterns of work this paper explores two approaches to the measurement of intertemporal substitution that have appeared in the literature the first approach is to use consumption to control for wealth and unobserved expectations about future wages in the labor supply equation the second approach is to estimate a first difference equation for hours in which labor supply from the previous period serves as a control for wealth and wage expectations the results indicate that intertemporal substitution elasticity for married men is positive but small

entrepreneurial spawning and firm characteristics we analyze the implications of the decision to spawn or to retain a new product for the nature and evolution of the firm in our model a new product is spawned if the fit between the product and its parent firm organization is not adequate we focus on the impact of the firm s history of spawning decisions on firm characteristics such as size focus profitability and innovativeness and analyze its role in shaping firm dynamics in accordance with the empirical literature our model predicts that older firms innovate less spawn less are more diversified and less profitable and that firms with more valuable general or specialized resources innovate and spawn more echoing seemingly contradictory empirical findings our model predicts that small focused firms large diversified firms innovate and spawn more and are more profitable when sample heterogeneity is driven by the importance of organizational fit the value of general resources this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

taxing top earners a human capital perspective we assess the consequences of substantially increasing the marginal tax rate on u s top earners using a human capital model we nd that 1 the peak of the model laer curve occurs at a 52 percent top tax rate 2 if human capital were exogenous then the top of the laer curve would occur at a 66 percent top tax rate and 3 applying the theory and methods that diamond and saez 2011 use to provide quantitative guidance for setting the top tax rate to model data produces a tax rate that substantially exceeds 52 percent

consumer preferences for electricity tariffs does proximity matter abstract the introduction of renewable energy sources fosters the transformation to an energy system with distributed generation this alters the relation between consumers and power generation sites as generation and consumption spatially converge it allows for new configurations within the energy sector and provides opportunities for marketing regional energy we empirically investigate consumer preferences for electricity generation in proximity to end users focusing on the proximity of generation and providers and present representative data for germany in a discrete choice experiment a sample of 780 consumer households and 173 adopters of a renewable energy system prosumers chose from a range of different electricity tariffs we estimate the willingness to pay for the following attributes shares of regional generation power providers and electricity mixes we find evidence in favor of regional production but in spite of positive attitudes towards local generation from renewable sources willingness to pay is not responsive to higher shares of regional generation in addition a preference for regional providers exists the results show that renewable energy mixes are preferred particularly a solar and hydro mix adopters state slightly more distinct preferences as compared to consumer households thus we find there is potential for business models offering regionally generated electricity

steering innovations towards a green economy understanding government intervention in this paper we analyse institutional conditions facilitating the transition towards a green economy by encouraging investment in the enhancement of natural capital and social equity focussing especially on government interventions presenting a conceptual institutional model how innovation generally occurs we depict system levels that can be influenced by government interventions to facilitate societal innovations towards a green economy we hypothesize that the transition to a green economy is about extending the possibility frontier outwards towards a greener economy while at the same time limiting the action space at the brown economy end a normative evaluation framework is presented to assess transitions correspondingly we elaborate on the emerging lessons for governance by examining evidence from five selected european case studies and provide a non exhaustive list of impacts that government intervention may have on the action spaces available at different system levels

the german energy transition as a regime shift abstract in this paper i use the resilience framework to interpret the project of transforming the german energy system into a renewable energy sources res based system the so called energiewende as a regime shift this regime shift comprises several transformations which are currently altering the technological political and economic system structure to build my argument i first sketch how technological political and economic developments reduced the resilience of the conventional fossil nuclear energy regime and created a new res regime second i depict recent changes in german public discourse and energy policy as the shift to the res regime third i highlight the challenges involved with increasing the resilience of the res regime in particular sufficient resilience of the electricity transmission grid appears to be crucial for facilitating the transformation of the whole energy system

on self interested preferences for burden sharing rules an econometric analysis for the costs of energy policy measures abstract this paper examines the acceptance of burden sharing rules that refer to the costs of the german energy transition which is one of the most challenging and disputed national climate and energy policy measures based on data from a comprehensive survey of more than 2200 citizens the empirical analysis reveals that the polluter pays rule has by far the highest support compared with the ability to pay rule and especially compared with the equal pay rule which is widely refused in the sample since the distribution of the costs of the german energy transition is largely in line with a polluter pays rule its strong support seems to contribute to the high acceptance of the energy transition at all the main result of our econometric analysis with multivariate binary and ordered probit models is that not only some attitudinal factors like environmental values and political identification but especially economic self interest is relevant since equivalent energy expenditures have a significantly negative effect on the support of the polluter pays rule and especially equivalent income has a significantly negative effect on the preference for the ability to pay rule these results suggest that the use of distributional arguments for the criticism of energy policy measures is not necessarily value driven on the basis of real perceptions of distributive justice but can also be strategically motivated to prevent and combat economically unfavorable measures together with the strong general support of the polluter pays rule these results suggest that a sharp reorientation of the german energy transition due to distributional arguments is not very useful

do policy mix characteristics matter for low carbon innovation a survey based exploration of renewable power generation technologies in germany abstract policy mixes may play a crucial role in redirecting and accelerating innovation towards low carbon solutions thus addressing a key societal challenge towards this end some argue that the characteristics of such policy mixes matter greatly yet with little empirical evidence backing up such claims in this paper we explore this link between policy mix characteristics and low carbon innovation using the research case of the transition of the german electricity system towards renewable energy our empirical insights are based on an innovation survey administered to german manufacturers of renewable power generation technologies which builds on the community innovation survey for our purposes we adjusted the survey to better capture companies perceptions of policy mixes employing a bivariate tobit model we find evidence that companies perceptions regarding the consistency and credibility of the policy mix are positively associated with their innovation expenditures for renewable energies and this positive link intensifies when considering the mutual interdependence of these policy mix characteristics in contrast neither the comprehensiveness of the instrument mix nor the coherence of policy processes were found to be related to innovation expenditures overall these findings suggest that future research on low carbon and eco innovation should pay greater attention to the characteristics of policy mixes rather than focusing on policy instruments only finally our findings indicate a need to consider how policy may be measured in innovation surveys to generate better informed policy advice regarding the greening of innovation

women wealth and mobility using estate tax returns data we observe that the share of women among the very wealthy in the united states peaked in the late 1960s at nearly one half and then declined to one third we argue that this pattern reflects changes in the importance of dynastic wealth with the share of women proxying for inher ited wealth if so wealth mobility decreased until the 1970s and rose thereafter such an interpretation is consistent with technological change driving long term trends in mobility and inequality as well as the recent divergence between top wealth and top income shares documented elsewhere jel d31 j16 j62 033 the extent of and changes in intergenerational mobility of wealth are central to understanding dynamics of wealth inequality but are hard to measure in this paper we argue that the share of women among the wealthiest americans can be used as a proxy for the importance of inherited rela tive to self made wealth this approach assumes that women tend to inherit rather than make great fortunes if so a higher share of women among the wealthy would reflect a rise in inherited wealth at the top and thus lower wealth mobility conversely higher wealth mobility where self made wealth replaces inherited wealth would result in more men at the top of the wealth distribution judged by this proxy and corroborated by various data sources wealth mobility decreased in the period 1925 1969 and increased thereafter such a pattern is consistent with an important role for technological change in shaping the wealth distribution and can provide an explanation for why wealth concentra tion has remained stable despite increasing income concentration in the last three decades over the past century the share of women among the very wealthy followed an inverse u pattern peaking in the late 1960s according to estate tax returns in 1925 one quarter of the wealthiest 0 01 percent were women this fraction rose rapidly through world war ii wwii and then more slowly to peak in 1969 when women neared parity with men since then the decline has been marked by 2000 women s share had fallen to one third its prewar level while the rise was evident among all wealth groups in the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution the decline was confined to the very top figure ia graphs the share of women for four different groups in the top 1 percent among decedents by year figure ib does the same for the living population with the help of estate multipliers a method that treats death as a random sampling device and uses mortality rates by age and gender to infer the distribution of wealth among the living as described in the data appendix while the rise in the share of women among the wealthy until the 1960s could reflect improve ments in women s economic status labor market gains work against the recent decline for instance since the 1970s the share of women among top earners top 0 1 percent has risen by

tax policy and human capital formation missing from recent discussions of tax reform is any systematic analysis of the effects of various tax proposals on skill formation this gap in the literature in empirical public finance is due to the absence of any empirically based general equilibrium models with both human capital formation and physical capital formation that are consistent with observations on modern labor markets this paper is a progress report on our ongoing research on formulating and estimating dynamic general equilibrium models with endogenous heterogeneous human capital accumulation our model explains many features of rising wage inequality in the u s economy james heckman lance lochner and christopher taber 1998 in this paper we use our model to study the impacts on skill formation of proposals to switch from progressive taxes to flat income and consumption taxes for the sake of brevity we focus on steady states in this paper although we study both transitions and steady states in our research this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

progressive taxation in a dynastic model of human capital abstract we develop a quantitative theory of economic inequality to investigate the effects of replacing the current u s progressive income tax system with a proportional one the cross sectional implications of the theory are used to discipline the assessment of the effects of tax policy and circumvent the lack of conclusive micro evidence on the parameterization of the human capital production technology we find that the elimination of progressive taxation increases steady state level of output by 12 6 capital by 21 8 and consumption by 13 2 moreover it increases economic inequality and its persistence across generations

how progressive is the u s federal tax system a historical and international perspective this paper provides estimates of federal tax rates by income groups in the united states since 1960 with special emphasis on very top income groups we include individual and corporate income taxes payroll taxes and estate and gift taxes the progressivity of the u s federal tax system at the top of the income distribution has declined dramatically since the 1960s this dramatic drop in progressivity is due primarily to a drop in corporate taxes and in estate and gift taxes combined with a sharp change in the composition of top incomes away from capital income and toward labor income the sharp drop in statutory top marginal individual income tax rates has contributed only moderately to the decline in tax progressivity international comparisons confirm that is it critical to take into account other taxes than the individual income tax to properly assess the extent of overall tax progressivity both for time trends and for cross country comparisons the pattern for the united kingdom is similar to the u s pattern france had less progressive taxes than the united states or the united kingdom in 1970 but has experienced an increase in tax progressivity and has now a more progressive tax system than the united states or the united kingdom

the sufficient statistic approach predicting the top of the laffer curve abstract a formula for the revenue maximizing top tax rate is derived as a function of three elasticities the formula applies to static models and to steady states of dynamic models and is relevant for the top tax rate on any component of income the formula is applied to several classic models the application of the formula is also illustrated using a quantitative human capital model

sensitivity of energy system investments to policy regulation changes too many too fast abstract in this paper we argue that the interaction of energy policy regulations in the european electricity sector may be described by the slow fast class of dynamical systems such systems may exhibit drastic changes in their dynamics known as bifurcations one important being the so called blue sky catastrophe once reaching such a state the slow system becomes unresponsive to the changes in the fast system for the energy policy nexus this translates into the energy system becoming unresponsive to policy interventions leading to a freeze in the system dynamics application of this result allows us to argue that caution is needed when updating economic policies to achieve a faster transition towards a low carbon energy supply structure to avoid this risk the policy design should be aimed at long term incentive structures with less frequent but more consistent interventions

retirement financing an optimal reform approach we study policy reforms aimed at overhauling retirement financing we develop a novel approach by considering optimal reforms policy reforms that minimize the cost for the government while respecting the distribution of welfare in the economy our model is an olg model with life cycle features and bequest motives where individuals are heterogeneous in their earning ability and mortality theoretically we show that due to the negative correlation between earnings ability and mortality postretirement distortions to saving decisions are a robust feature of any optimal policy we then use this framework to quantitatively analyze optimal reforms our quantitative exercise shows that an optimal reform relative to the status quo must have three key features first post retirement assets must be subsidized while bequests must be taxed on average optimal marginal subsidies on assets for individuals above age 65 is 3 2 percent while optimal marginal tax on their bequest is 60 percent second pre retirement transfers must increase while social security benefits must become less generous in the aggregate and more progressive towards low income groups finally earnings tax reform does not contribute to optimal reforms i e optimal marginal taxes on earnings remain very close to the status quo the optimal policies reduce the present discounted value of net tax and transfers to each generation by 15 percent

the case for a progressive tax from basic research to policy recommendations the fair distribution of the tax burden has long been a central issue in policyhe fair distribution of the tax burden has long been a central issue in policymaking a large academic literature has developed models of optimal tax making a large academic literature has developed models of optimal tax theory to cast light on the problem of optimal tax progressivity in this theory to cast light on the problem of optimal tax progressivity in this paper we explore the path from basic research results in optimal tax theory to paper we explore the path from basic research results in optimal tax theory to formulating policy recommendations formulating policy recommendations models in optimal tax theory typically posit that the tax system should maximize a models in optimal tax theory typically posit that the tax system should maximize a social welfare function subject to a government budget constraint taking into account social welfare function subject to a government budget constraint taking into account that individuals respond to taxes and transfers social welfare is larger when resources that individuals respond to taxes and transfers social welfare is larger when resources are more equally distributed but redistributive taxes and transfers can negatively are more equally distributed but redistributive taxes and transfers can negatively affect incentives to work save and earn income in the fi rst place this creates the clasaffect incentives to work save and earn income in the fi rst place this creates the classical trade off between equity and effi ciency which is at the core of the optimal income sical trade off between equity and effi ciency which is at the core of the optimal income tax problem in general optimal tax analyses maximize social welfare as a function of tax problem in general optimal tax analyses maximize social welfare as a function of individual utilities the sum of utilities in the utilitarian case the marginal weight for individual utilities the sum of utilities in the utilitarian case the marginal weight for a given person in the social welfare function measures the value of an additional dollar a given person in the social welfare function measures the value of an additional dollar of consumption expressed in terms of public funds such welfare weights depend on of consumption expressed in terms of public funds such welfare weights depend on the level of redistribution and are decreasing with income whenever society values the level of redistribution and are decreasing with income whenever society values more equality of income therefore optimal income tax theory is fi rst a normative more equality of income therefore optimal income tax theory is fi rst a normative theory that shows how a social welfare objective combines with constraints arising from theory that shows how a social welfare objective combines with constraints arising from limits on resources and behavioral responses to taxation in order to derive specifi c limits on resources and behavioral responses to taxation in order to derive specifi c

optimal taxation and human capital policies over the life cycle this paper derives optimal income tax and human capital policies in a life cycle model with risky human capital the government faces asymmetric information regarding agents ability its evolution and labor supply when the wage elasticity with respect to ability is increasing in human capital the optimal subsidy involves less than full deductibility of human capital expenses on the tax base and falls with age income contingent loans or a deferred deductibility scheme can implement the optimum numerical results suggest that full deductibility of expenses is close to optimal and that simple linear age dependent policies perform very well

the life cycle of a competitive industry firm numbers first rise then later fall as an industry evolves this nonmonotonicity is explained using a competitive model in which innovation opportunities fuel entry and relative failure to innovate prompts exit equilibrium time paths for price and quantity also share features of the data the model is estimated using data from the u s automobile tire industry a particularly dramatic example of the nonmonotonicity in firm numbers

renewable energy and politics a systematic review and new evidence abstract this paper reviews the literature in the intersection of renewable energies and politics adopting a multidisciplinary social sciences perspective we begin by analyzing the recent literature dealing with renewable energies and politics illustrating the analysis with bibliometric data the search protocol revealed 853 contributions dated from 1998 then we focus on the 186 contributions approached from a social sciences perspective establishing a taxonomy to classify the contributions into the main issues covered we identify contributions dealing with governance with public acceptance with markets and prices and with political or policy determinants of renewable energies in an empirical application we show that more democratic countries tend to invest more in renewable energies taking into account other determinants e g income energy dependence pollution emissions of this investment

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

analysis of factors affecting a shift in a local energy system towards 100 renewable energy community abstract we explore what factors play a critical role in a shift of a local energy system towards 100 renewable energy community by examining the case using a framework that highlights the role of key state and non state actors investors local officials citizens and policy entrepreneurs and the role of governance mode horizontal self steering partnership participation inclusiveness of energy decision making co ownership of the process for the actual outcome the framework is based on recent transition literature that has focused on the dynamics of change the case study provides the evidence of the important role of participation of local community in the open decision making process from the onset their partnership in the local energy system solutions sense of ownership as well as the role of mayor as a policy entrepreneur

human capital and earnings distribution dynamics abstract earnings heterogeneity plays a crucial role in modern macroeconomics we document that mean earnings and measures of earnings dispersion and skewness all increase in us data over most of the working life cycle for a typical cohort as the cohort ages we show that i a human capital model can replicate these properties from the right distribution of initial human capital and learning ability ii differences in learning ability are essential to produce an increase in earnings dispersion over the life cycle and iii differences in learning ability account for the bulk of the variation in the present value of earnings across agents these findings emphasize the need to further understand the role and origins of initial conditions

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

capacity dynamics and endogenous asymmetries in firm size empirical evidence suggests that there are substantial and persistent differences in the sizes of firms in most industries we propose a dynamic model of capacity accumulation that is consistent with the observed facts the model highlights the mode of product market competition and the extent of investment reversibility as key determinants of the size distribution of firms in an industry in particular if firms compete in prices and the rate of depreciation is large then the industry moves toward an outcome with one dominant firm and one small firm industry dynamics in this case resemble a preemption race contrary to the usual intuition this preemption race becomes more brutal as investment becomes more reversible

the scope and organization of production firm dynamics over the learning curve i introduce a bayesian learning model of the firm to account for a variety of empirical facts about firms the many tasks the firm can undertake the scope of the firm are informationally related so that the firm can enjoy some economies of scope from information the model predicts changes in firm size and its comovement with firm scope that are broadly consistent with the empirical evidence it also provides an explanation for the limits to the scope of the firm the firm may lack information or it may be costly to communicate the information necessary to undertake many tasks