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

perfect equilibria in a trade liberalization game the credibility of temporary protection is examined in a simple infinite horizon perfect information game of timing in which the domestic government uses the threat of future liberalization to induce the domestic firm to invest all pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria are cyclical and surprisingly one of them implements optimal temporary protection however this equilibrium fails to pass another credibility criterion called renegotiation proof the game has a unique stationary subgame perfect equilibrium in mixed strategies copyright 1990 by american economic association

interpreting net fiscal incidence calculations this paper evaluates calculations of net fiscal incidence using an applied general equilibrium model of australia into which public goods are incorporated results indicate that it is inappropriate to regard the redistributive impacts of government policies as a zero sum game for large reductions in public goods provision and taxes the dominant effect is the foregone consumer surplus from suboptimal public goods provision in addition the redistributive pattern of small charges are quite different from large charges marginal and average net fiscal incidence thus need to be clearly separated a point not emphasized in existing literature copyright 1987 by mit press

technology adoption government policy and tariffication abstract we integrate trade policy into an open economy model of technology adoption to investigate the impact of alternate trade barriers on the equilibrium diffusion of a cost saving technology it is shown that even when ad valorem tariffs have a neutral impact on technology adoption non tariff barriers such as quotas can be used to affect the speed of technology diffusion in both the home and foreign countries in addition we demonstrate how in an open economy setting tariffication i e the conversion of quotas to ad valorem tariffs can lead to faster technology adoption world wide

applied general equilibrium models of taxation and international trade an introduction and survey we wish to acknowledge the help of three referees and of john pencavel on several earlier drafts as well as the assistance of the modelers whose work is referred to in the paper they corrected our lack of understanding of their work and provided many other helpful comments excellent research and bibliographical assistance have been provided by debbie fretz radwan shaban and janet stotsky helpful comments have been made by charles ballard michael boskin lans bovenberg sylvester damus harvey galper glenn harrison gordon lenjosek jack mutti serena ng t n srinivasan charles stuart and eric toder the authors also acknowledgefinancial support from the national bureau of economic research the national science foundation international business machines and the social sciences and humanities research council ottawa canada

ethical social index numbers and the measure ment of effective tax benefit progressivity in this paper we propose a general method for constructing measures both relative and absolute of effective tax benefit progressivity from social welfare functions relative measures compare the after tax or benefit distribution of income with the distribution that would result if the burden were imposed proportionally absolute measures use the equal taxation of individuals as a benchmark these indices are related to relative and absolute indices of inequality our relative indices are generalizations of the gini index based musgrave thin measure of effective progressivity we compare our general indices to the proposals of kakwani khetan and poddar and suits

how responsible is a region for its carbon emissions an empirical general equilibrium analysis targets for co2 reduction tend to be set in terms of the amount of pollution generated within the borders of a given region or nation that is under a production accounting principle however in recent years there has been increased public and policy interest in the notion of a carbon footprint or the amount of pollution generated globally to serve final consumption demand within a region or nation that is switching focus to a consumption accounting principle however this paper argues that a potential issue arising from the increasing focus on consumption based carbon footprint type measures is that while regional co2 generation embodied in export production is attributed outside of the region i e to the carbon footprints of other regions nations regional consumers are likely to benefit from such production moreover where there is a geographical and supply chain gap between producers and final consumers it may be difficult to identify precisely whose carbon footprint emissions should be allocated to

credibility of protection and incentives to innovate in recent trade policy debates it is often argued that temporary protection stimulates innovation this paper shows that the validity of the argument depends on the perceived credibility of protection policy if it is suspected that temporary protection will be removed early should innovation occur before its terminal date the protected firm invests less in r d than it does under free trade if it is expected that protection will be extended should no innovation have occurred by its terminal date investment falls below the free trade level and eventually to zero as the terminal date is approached

energy in a regional economy a computable general equilibrium model for california abstract this study presents a model of energy in the california economy and uses it to simulate long run impacts of oil price changes under varying assumptions about the structure of the economy the distinguishing feature of the model is flexibility use of generalized leontief flexible cost functions at the sectoral level captures the substitution effects of relative price changes while at the same time retaining the structure of traditional input output analysis experimental results suggest this innovation can be important a doubling of the price of imported oil leads to a much larger drop in oil use and a substantially smaller drop in aggregate consumption than is obtained with a fixed coefficient version of the model

from theory to practice canadian economists contributions to public finance we survey canadian economists contributions to the field of public finance from the mid 1980s to 2016 we highlight the development and extension of the models and tools of public economics and the empirical studies that have deepened our understanding of the efficiency and distributional issues over a wide range of public finance issues we also highlight contributions to the development of policies through commissioned reports and the important role that canadian institutions the canadian tax foundation the think tanks and the federal and provincial departments of finance have played in shaping tax and fiscal policies de la theorie a la pratique contributions des economistes canadiens a la finance publique on examine les contributions des economistes canadiens au domaine de la finance publique du milieu des annees 1980 a 2016 on souligne le developpement et l extension des modeles et des outils d economie publique et les etudes empiriques qui ont aide a approfondir notre comprehension des enjeux d efficacite et de distribution dans un vaste eventail de questions de finance publique on souligne aussi les contributions des rapports commandites au developpement de politiques publiques ainsi que le role important d institutions canadiennes l association canadienne d etudes fiscales les groupes d experts ainsi que les ministeres des finances du gouvernement federal et des gouvernements provinciaux dans le design des politiques fiscales

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

cross country evidence on the distributional impact of fiscal policy abstractthis article provides new evidence on the distributional effects of fiscal policy using data on a panel of oecd economies over the last four decades we study how four measures of income in

endogenous probability of protection and firm behavior abstract this paper studies the strategic reactions of firms to protectionist policies that are enforced with endogenous probability this probability is a function of firms actions firms in the country that may adopt the protectionist measures try to increase the probability of sanctions while foreign firms try to reduce this probability a simple framework is used to derive general results for uncertain protection this framework is used to analyze the responses to specific protectionist policies such as antidumping legislation and restrictions on the import market share finally the paper studies the welfare implications of the model

tax incidence analysis of developing countries an alternative view misleading conclusions can be drawn from studies of tax incidence that ignore the special features of developing countries incorporating these features can sometimes reverse the incidence pattern of taxes relative to what is often taken to be conventional wisdom even where patterns are not reversed quantitative differences can be substantial the newer views of incidence have implications for tax restructuring options being considered in several developing countries the proposed restructuring may appear to lead only to a more regressive tax system because of improper incidence analysis copyright 1991 by oxford university press

the economic cost of the cap revisited this paper reports estimates of the domestic economic cost of the common agricultural policy cap from computable general equilibrium simulations which incorporate imperfect competition in the non primary sectors as well as explicit modelling of agricultural protection imperfect competition is characterised to include hierarchical preferences addressing the notion of varietal diversity as an important decision variable in consumer behaviour results indicate that repeal of the cap would reduce varietal diversity in food processing in the eu causing utility losses however these would be countered by positive varietal effects in other sectors and by strong allocative effects the net cost of the cap to the eu is estimated at 0 2 of gross domestic product gdp for an individual member state the cost can be considerably larger as with the uk where the estimate is above 0 5 of gdp

the redistribution of income in canada this original study challenges the widely held belief that government policies to redistribute income have made canada a more egalitarian state the author bases his conclusions on extensive documentation of the real effect of changes in taxes transfers and government expenditures

unequal societies income distribution and the social contract this paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political fundamentals can sustain such different systems of social insurance fiscal redistribution and education finance as those of the united states and western europe with imperfect credit and insurance markets some redistributive policies can improve ex ante welfare and this implies that their political support tends to decrease with inequality conversely with credit constraints lower redistribution translates into more persistent inequality hence the potential for multiple steady states with mutually reinforcing high inequality and low redistribution or vice versa

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

tariffs and the adoption of clean technology under asymmetric information this paper examines the effect of a tariff on the decision of a foreign monopolist to adopt clean technology which reduces the flow of a negative cross border externality the clean technology increases the marginal cost of production relative to the dirty technology but only the firm knows the extent of the increase under complete information despite its protectionist motivation the importing country s optimal tariff induces the firm to adopt the clean technology if and only if it is globally efficient to do so under incomplete information this efficiency property is disrupted and the firm biases its choice in favour of dirty technology jel classification f13 f18 ce memoire examine l effet d un tarif douanier sur la decision d un monopoleur etranger d adopter une technologie qui reduise le flux d effets externes negatifs a travers la frontiere la technologie propre accroit le cout marginal de production par rapport a ce qu il serait avec une technologie salissante mais seule l entreprise connait la taille de cet accroissement en regime d information complete malgre ses motivations protectionnistes le tarif optimal du pays importateur entraine l entreprise a adopter la technologie propre si et seulement si c est globalement efficient de le faire en regime d information incomplete cette propriete est perturbee et l entreprise tend a faire ses choix en faveur de la technologie salissante

a framework to account for the tourism carbon footprint at island destinations abstract given concerns over greenhouse gases and the role of tourism in generating such environmental externality a consistent carbon measurement framework is needed this paper combines principles derived from production and consumption accounting measures to better allocate the responsibility for carbon emissions utilizing a boundary that includes domestic tourism expenditure inbound tourism expenditure and local spending associated with outbound travel this paper a proposes a framework to measure the domestic total carbon effect and foreign sourced effect and b applies the analytical framework to taiwan the empirical study indicates that the carbon emissions for domestic tourism industries international aviation and imports accounted for 47 28 and 25 of the tourism carbon footprint it is suggested that an island s dependence on both aviation and international trade leads to a larger share of emissions outside their geographic territory with respect to tourism development

the incidence of government expenditure and redistribution in the united kingdom not choose to produce or will not produce in a socially efficient manner the form of taxation adopted by a government may be influenced by a number of factors but equity considerations are often important thus tax systems frequently aim to alter the distribution of post tax incomes or some other measure of individuals command over goods and services from that of pre tax incomes of course redistribution brought about by taxation can alter individuals command only over marketed goods and services however the effects of the fiscal system as a whole tax and government expenditure on redistribution may be very different from redistribution via taxation alone unfortunately although there have been many attempts to measure the distributional impact of specific taxes or tax systems the theoretical and empirical difficulties experienced when trying to measure the redistributional effect of publicly provided goods and services places severe limitations on attempts to measure fiscal redistribution recent british and us studies of fiscal incidence have tended to allocate the benefits of government expenditure across income groups in line with their estimated consumption of government services government services that cannot be allocated specifically have usually been allocated using various

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

new ways of looking at old issues inequality and growth abstract the paper uses new cross country data on income and asset land distribution to show that i there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in the asset distribution and long term growth ii inequality reduces income growth for the poor but not for the rich and iii available longitudinal data provide little support for the kuznets hypothesis policies that increase aggregate investment and facilitate acquisition of assets by the poor might thus be doubly beneficial for growth and poverty reduction

dumping and dynamic competition abstract when the current output level affects future production costs domestic and foreign profit maximizing firms may set prices below current costs to gain experience antidumping enforcement which poses a barrier to below cost sales by foreign rivals changes the payoff structure of competition and alters the equilibrium decisions of both foreign and domestic firms a comparison of the nash equilibria with and without antidumping rules shows that these rules change market outcomes even when they do not appear to be binding ex post this positive analysis of antidumping enforcement complements previous studies that have considered the motivation for dumping

are the penn world tables data on government consumption and investment being misused abstract this paper argues that it is inappropriate to measure g y and i y using penn world tables data the empirical results of barro and lee carnegie rochester conference series on public policy 40 1994 1 46 are sensitive to whether g y and i y are measured in local or international prices

consumer side actions in a low carbon economy a dynamic cge analysis for spain abstract in recent decades the need to strengthen efforts to reduce ghg emissions to combat climate change has become a major global concern as reflected in the 2015 paris agreement and the eu climate strategy 2016 in this context eu countries are required to organize their contributions to environmental improvement through national strategies given the potential importance of demand side actions both directly and through their relationship with the productive system as well as the need for a dynamic evolution we assess the dynamic path and medium term environmental impact of certain consumer oriented measures using a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model specifically we generate scenarios that follow spain s strategies and evaluate the dynamic impact of more efficient technologies on electricity consumption and the use of transport services both in terms of environmental ghg and sox and economic effects our results confirm the role of technology improvements in delivering positive results for the environment and the importance of economy wide rebound effects through a detailed study of energy uses as a result of efficiency improvements in household energy consumption our findings show that reductions in emissions per person are consistent with economic growth

age analysis of the impact of a carbon energy tax on the irish economy a computable general equilibrium model with specific detail in taxation and energy use is developed in this paper to quantify the impact of the implementation of energy taxation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in ireland benchmark data combining physical energy and emissions data and economic data in the form of a social accounting matrix sam had to be compiled from various data sources because energy and pollution accounts from the seea are not available for ireland we find that the reduction target for energy related co2 emissions in ireland of 25 8 compared to 1998 levels can be achieved with a carbon energy tax of 10 15 euros per tonne of co2 though fuel switching is important in meeting the target this result is more sensitive to the possibilities for producers to substitute away from energy use welfare would fall but only by small percentages production and consumption patterns would change more significantly with a shift in demand from fuels with a high emission factor to energy sources with a lower carbon intensity and from energy to other commodities this paper confirms that a carbon energy tax leads to greater emission reductions than an equivalent uniform energy tax the latter has a stronger negative impact on the less polluting energy sectors whereas the carbon tax greatly stimulates the use of renewable energy and reduces the use of peat and coal the new sam the model and the application to energy taxes contribute to a better informed debate on environmental policy in ireland

domino dumping i competitive exporters when exporting firms face the prospect of voluntary export restraints they have an incentive to export more than with no prospect of a voluntary export restraint since greater exports lead to larger license allocations in the event of a voluntary export restraint export country governments incentives differ leading either to export tax or subsidy depending on the circumstances the prospect of one departure from free trade thus leads to another a domino effect antidumping enforcement will ordinarily not eliminate and ironically may increase dumping copyright 1992 by american economic association

modelling the effects of immigration on regional economic performance and wage distribution a computable general equilibrium cge analysis of three european union regions pouliakas k roberts d balamou e and psaltopoulos d modelling the effects of immigration on regional economic performance and wage distribution a computable general equilibrium cge analysis of three european union regions regional studies the paper uses a regional computable general equilibrium cge model to analyse the effects of immigration on three small remote european union regions located within scotland uk greece and latvia two migration scenarios are assessed in the first total labour supply is affected in the second the importance of migratory flows by differential labour skill types is investigated the results indicate significant differences in the extent to which regional economies are affected by immigration they also suggest that remote regions are highly vulnerable to the out migration of skilled workers brain drain while the in migration of unskilled workers leads to widening wage inequality

emissions in a decarbonised economy global lessons from a carbon footprint analysis of iceland abstract decarbonisation of stationary energy supply particularly electricity grids is the current focus of climate change mitigation policy however studies have suggested that this narrow policy focus is insufficient to achieve meaningful global emissions reductions using iceland as a case study this paper demonstrates that significant emissions arise from transport and imported products which are often not fully captured in territorial ghg inventories this results in high greenhouse gas emissions per capita regardless of the nation s domestic energy supply the result is a low carbon illusion in which rich economies believe they are reducing their ghg responsibility whilst global emissions continue to grow this paper presents the first consumption based carbon footprint cbcf analysis for iceland a nation where the stationary energy supply is 99 renewable and could be viewed as a decarbonisation future case for rich nations globally the study combines icelandic household expenditure data with the multi regional input output database eora to calculate the cbcf of icelandic households the average annual cbcf of icelandic households was 10 4 tco2eq capita similar in magnitude to other eu nations despite iceland s unique energy supply ghg emissions from transport food and goods dominated the household cbcf the national cbcf was higher than most european nations and 55 higher than the territorial emissions inventory approximately 71 of household emissions were attributed to imported goods which were mapped globally revealing that the ghg emissions burden of icelandic consumption falls primarily on developing nations the findings suggest that a broader ghg accounting framework and resulting policy focus is required both in iceland and globally that incorporates both supply and demand based ghg reduction strategies

modelling regional policy scenarios in the agri food sector a case study of a spanish region abstractthe agri food industry has several features of great importance for sustainable economic growth in rural areas the objective of this work is to evaluate the effects associated with different scenarios of growth and changes in the regional agri food industry these scenarios simulate changes in exports and imports changes in technology and changes in the level of industrial integration we develop a computable general equilibrium model calibrated for the region our results indicate that policies trying to improve the competitiveness and dynamism of strategic sectors as the agro industrial complex in this regional economy exert positive effects on its growth and income having notable impacts on local job markets but also in other sectors and activities linked through the whole production chain

the political economy of administered protection trade restrictions are hardly ever voted directly by congress though the threat of direct congressional action is frequently present pressure for protection is usually applied through the major instruments for the administrative regulation of imports the antidumping and countervailing duty procedures and the escape clause mechanism in this paper we will examine these instruments for the administrative regulation of imports the form of the paper is not novel a theory of how these mechanisms work is developed then operational implications of this theory are deduced and tested over the record of countervailing duty antidumping and escape clause cases decided from 1975 through 1979 this is the period over which the trade act of 1974 was in force because the nature of these mechanisms is relatively unfamiliar a relatively large amount of institutional information is provided

the demand for military expenditures an international comparison earlier studies have explained inter country variations in the share of gnp devoted to military expenditures by international spillovers and by differences in the threat of attack related to relative incomes in this paper we use the theory of public choice to explain these differences we attempt to measure the importance of both international spillovers and relative incomes along with two other factors the tax price elasticity of demand and economies of scale in the consumption of security we find that international spillovers are significant and positive that the income elasticity of demand is greater than unity that the tax price elasticity of demand explains part of observed inter country differences and that there are considerable economies of scale in the consumption of military spending finally between 1960 and 1975 there was apparently a substantial increase in the value which each country derived from a dollar of military spending by its allies this phenomenon which seems related to the increased importance of deterrent weapons has tended to induce individual alliance members to reduce the share of their national income devoted to defense

public goods and the distribution of income abstract this article addresses conceptual issues concerning the distributive incidence of public goods solutions depend on the specific purposes for asking the question of distributive incidence notably assessing the extent to which various public goods should be provided determining how the provision of public goods affects the desirability of income redistribution and providing a meaningful description of the distribution of well being in the course of the analysis a simple and intuitive version of the benefit principle of taxation qualitatively different from those commonly advanced in pertinent literatures is presented and some of the problems confronting empirical attempts to measure the distributive incidence of public goods are resolved

promise and pitfalls in the use of secondary data sets income inequality in oecd countries as a case study this paper examines the role of secondary data sets in empirical economic research taking the field of income distribution as a case study we illustrate problems faced by users of secondary statistics showing how both cross country comparisons and time series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data after describing the genealogy of secondary data sets on income inequality we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across oecd countries and over time the lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data sets are summarized at the end of the paper

economic openness democracy and income inequality an empirical analysis scholars have studied effects of economic openness and democracy on national income inequality in two literatures in democracy studies scholars agree democracy reduces inequality but empirical evidence is ambiguous in globalization studies effects of economic openness on inequality are debated but have not been rigorously examined this article is the first systematic statistical study of the effects of both economic openness and democracy on income inequality these effects need to be studied together the authors measure national income inequality from a comprehensive gini coefficient data set economic openness is measured from trade flows foreign direct investment inflows and financial capital inflows the period studied is 1960 to 1996 the unit of analysis is a country decade and the sample includes 69 countries the authors find that democracy and trade reduce income inequality foreign direct investments increase income inequality and financial capital does not affect income inequality policy implications are discussed

regional employment impacts of marine energy in the scottish economy a general equilibrium approach gilmartin m and allan g regional employment impacts of marine energy in the scottish economy a general equilibrium approach regional studies one aspect of the case for policy support for renewable energy developments is the wider economic benefits that are expected to be generated within scotland as with other regions of the uk there is a focus on encouraging domestically based renewable technologies this paper uses a regional computable general equilibrium framework to model the impact on the scottish economy of expenditures relating to marine energy installations the results illustrate the potential for considerable legacy effects after expenditures cease in identifying the specific sectoral expenditures with the largest impact on lifetime regional employment this approach offers important policy guidance

welfare costs of the u s antidumping and countervailing duty laws abstract the antidumping ad and countervailing duty cvd laws in the united states have become the most pervasive form of import relief sought by domestic producers this paper estimates the collective economic effect of the hundreds of active u s ad cvd orders using a computable general equilibrium model we estimate that the collective net economic welfare cost in 1993 of these orders to be 4 billion this welfare estimate is sensitive to various modeling assumptions which are explored in the paper with the implementation of the uruguay round agreements the ad cvd laws remain one of the costliest programs restraining u s trade

the distribution of wealth and fiscal policy in economies with finitely lived agents we study the dynamics of the distribution of wealth in an overlapping generation economy with finitely lived agents and intergenerational transmission of wealth financial markets are incomplete exposing agents to both labor and capital income risk we show that the stationary wealth distribution is a pareto distribution in the right tail and that it is capital income risk rather than labor income that drives the properties of the right tail of the wealth distribution we also study analytically the dependence of the distribution of wealth of wealth inequality in particular on various fiscal policy instruments like capital income taxes and estate taxes and on different degrees of social mobility we show that capital income and estate taxes can significantly reduce wealth inequality as do institutions favoring social mobility finally we calibrate the economy to match the lorenz curve of the wealth distribution of the u s economy

chinese firm and industry reactions to antidumping initiations and measures china has been the subject of large numbers of both antidumping initiations and measures this article explores the reactions of chinese firms and industries to these actions by using dynamic system gmm estimator and industrial panel data on all chinese firms in the industry foreign firms operating within china and state owned enterprises soes for aggregated firms group between 1997 and 2007 we find that antidumping actions by developed and developing countries negatively impact industrial profits and employee and firm numbers and also exports but improve labour productivity we also find that different kinds of firms show different responses all firms together in an industry react to antidumping the most and foreign and soe firms show a much smaller response further antidumping effects from different countries are different developed countries antidumping actions have more negative impact than developing countries actions the effects of us actions are different from the european union s

top incomes in the long run of history a recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid hence aggregate economic growth per capita and gini inequality indexes are sensitive to excluding or including top incomes we discuss the estimation methods and issues that arise when constructing top income share series including income definition and comparability over time and across countries tax avoidance and tax evasion we provide a summary of the key empirical findings most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the twentieth century in general due to shocks to top capital incomes during the wars and depression shocks top income shares do not recover in the immediate postwar decades however over the last thirty years top income shares have increased substantially in english speaking countries and in india and china but not in continental european countries or japan this increase is due in part to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes as a result wage income comprises a larger fraction of top incomes than in the past finally we discuss the theoretical and empirical models that have been proposed to account for the facts and the main questions that remain open

do increases in energy efficiency improve environmental quality and sustainability governments world wide increasingly see energy efficiency as an important aspect of sustainability however there is a debate in the literature as to whether the impact of improved energy efficiency on reducing energy use might be partially or more than wholly offset through rebound and backfire effects this paper clarifies the theoretical conditions under which such effects would occur and explores their likely significance using a computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy we find that for scotland a general improvement in energy efficiency in the production sectors of the economy initially produces rebound effects that eventually grow into backfire energy use ultimately increases in response to an efficiency gain and the ratio of gdp to co2 emissions falls the economic factors underpinning rebound effects are straightforward energy efficiency improvements result in an effective cut in energy prices which produces output substitution competitiveness and income effects that stimulate energy demands however the presence of strong rebound or even backfire does not mean that efficiency enhancing policies are irrelevant rather it suggests that such policies operating alone are insufficient to generate environmental improvements the implication is that a co ordinated portfolio of energy policies is required

entry dumping and shakeout this paper studies the process of entry dumping and shakeout and the properties of the free trade equilibrium that results in a world in which countries differ in their stock of technological knowledge but not necessarily in their stock of technological capability the model can account for the dumping of products by newly industrializing countries and technological newcom ers at a price that fails to cover average cost in the face of a surge i n world demand for the dumped product a phenomenon that has not been uncommon in recent years copyright 1993 by american economic association

fiscal policy and interest rates in europe the appetite for fiscal discipline has been steadily declining among most industrial countries in the past fiscal profligacy would have been punished by markets with higher interest rates and in some cases also exchange rate depreciation however in post emu europe exchange rate markets no longer discipline the fiscal behaviour of national governments perhaps more crucially even the interest rate punishment to fiscal indiscipline is highly uncertain with academic opinions being quite divided on this issue this paper takes a close look at the link between fiscal policy and interest rates in the european context the key finding is that an expansionary fiscal policy in one emu member will have an effect both on its spreads and on the overall level of interest rates for the currency union as a whole with the second effect however being quantitatively much more significant this suggests that there are indeed substantial spillovers through the interest rate channel among fiscal policies of member countries to limit countries incentive to run expansionary fiscal policies a set of rules like those embedded in the stability and growth pact is then needed some weak evidence is also found that after emu interest rate spillovers seem to be more significant for high debt countries with unsustainable fiscal policies reflecting perhaps market concerns about a possible sovereign bail out or the impact of financial distress there may be a case then for imposing tighter rules on high debt countries riccardo faini

developing approaches to measuring and monitoring sustainable development in wales a review munday m and roberts a 2006 developing approaches to measuring and monitoring sustainable development in wales a review regional studies 40 534 535 under the 1998 government of wales act the welsh assembly government committed to the promotion of sustainable development in the exercise of its functions the paper examines a selection of approaches that are being explored in wales to monitor and measure progress towards sustainable development objectives these approaches are the ecological footprint the index of sustainable economic welfare the environmental satellite account and environmental input output tables the paper shows that in wales there are problems with each of the approaches outlined but that development of an environmental satellite account could be useful with this approach linked to the other approaches reviewed and with the satellite account enabling environmental factors to be connected more readily to conventional regional accounting aggregates the findings are expecte

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

putting distribution back at the center of economics reflections on capital in the twenty first century when a lengthy book is widely discussed in academic circles and the popular media it is probably inevitable that the arguments of the book will be simplified in the telling and retelling in the case of my book capital in the twenty first century 2014 a common simplification of the main theme is that because the rate of return on capital r exceeds the growth rate of the economy g the inequality of wealth is destined to increase indefinitely over time in my view the magnitude of the gap between r and g is indeed one of the important forces that can explain historical magnitudes and variations in wealth inequality however i do not view r g as the only or even the primary tool for considering changes in income and wealth in the 20th century or for forecasting the path of income and wealth inequality in the 21st century in this essay i will take up several themes from my book that have perhaps become attenuated or garbled in the ongoing discussions of the book and will seek to re explain and re frame these themes first i stress the key role played in my book by the interaction between beliefs systems institutions and the dynamics of inequality second i briefly describe my multidimensional approach to the history of capital and inequality third i review the relationship and differing causes between wealth inequality and income inequality fourth i turn to the specific role of r g in the dynamics of wealth inequality specifically a larger r g gap will amplify the steady state inequality of a wealth distribution that arises out of a given mixture of shocks fifth i consider some of the scenarios that affect how r g might evolve in the 21st century including rising international tax competition a growth slowdown and differential access by the wealthy to higher returns on capital finally i seek to clarify what is distinctive in my historical and political economy approach to institutions and inequality dynamics and the complementarity with other approaches

innovations in regional computable general equilibrium cge modelling with the emergence of regional computable general equilibrium cge models in the later 1980s there was significant optimism that they would greatly push economic policy and the empirical envelopes unlike partial equilibrium approaches or input output methods cge models can trace the impact of an economic shock or policy shock through the various sectors allowing estimates of changes in factors output and prices however many of the first generation of cge models had a black box feel to them their results could be sensitive to the functional form parameter estimates and assumptions about capital and labour flows for example in their survey article partridge and rickman 1998 11 partridge m d and rickman d s 1998 regional computable general equilibrium modeling a survey and critical appraisal international regional science review 21 205 250 crossref web of science csa view all references called on cge modellers to account for these problems and strive to produce more credible results in recent years regional cge modellers have improved their approaches producing innovative techniques to apply to real world problems

political influence economic interests and endogenous tax structure in a computable equilibrium framework with application to the united states 1973 and 1983 we consider the properties of a computable equilibrium model ofa competitive political economy in which the economic interestsof groups of voters and their effective influence on equilibriumpolicy outcomes can be explicitely distinguished and computed the model incorporates an amended version of the gemtap taxmodel calibrated to data for the united states for 1973 and1983 emphasis is placed on how the aggregation of gemtaphouseholds into homogeneous groups affects the numericalrepresentation of interests and influence for representativemembers of each group

on the diffusion of new technology a game theoretic approach this paper is an attempt at a rigorous albeit not exceedingly general analysis of the diffusion of new technology in particular consider an industry composed of two firms each using the current best practice technology the firms are assumed to be operating at nash equilibrium output levels generating a market price given demand and profit allocations when a cost reducing innovation is announced each firm must determine when if ever to adopt it based in part upon the discounted cost of implementing the new technology and in part upon the behavior of the rival firm if either firm adopts before the other it can expect to make substantial profits at the expense of the other firm on the other hand the discounted sum of purchase price and adjustment costs may decline with the lengthening of the adjustment period as various quasi fixed factors become more easily variable therefore although waiting costs the firm more in terms of foregone profits it may save money on the cost of purchasing the new technology thus the firm must weigh the costs and benefits of delaying adoption as well as take account of its rival s strategic behavior

the co2 trade balance between scotland and the rest of the uk performing a multi region environmental input output analysis with limited data in this paper we attempt an empirical application of the multi region input output mrio method proposed by turner lenzen wiedmann and barrett turner k lenzen m wiedmann t barrett j 2007 examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics 62 1 37 44 in a recent issue of this journal in order to enumerate the co2 pollution content of interregional trade flows between scotland and the rest of the uk ruk we extend the analysis to account for direct emissions generation by households as final consumers and to a social accounting matrix sam where a more comprehensive account of incomes and expenditures is possible while the existence of significant data problems mean that the quantitative results of this study should be regarded as provisional the interregional economy environment io and sam framework for scotland and ruk allows an illustrative analysis of some very important issues in terms of the nature and significance of interregional environmental spillovers within the uk and the existence of a co2 trade balance between scotland and ruk

preemption and rent equalization in the adoption of new technology we study the adoption of a new technology to illustrate the effects of preemption in games of timing we show that the threat of preemption equalizes rents in a duopoly but that this result does not extend to the general oligopoly game if the gain to preemption is sufficiently small then the optimal symmetric outcome which involves late adoption is an equilibrium this contrasts with reinganum s result that in precommitment equilibria there must be diffusion we develop a new and richer formalism for modeling games of timing which permits a continuoustime representation of the limit of discrete time mixed strategy equilibria

endogenous money modern difficulties with the wicksellian approach the greater part of mainstream economics proceeds from the proposition that the supply of money is exogenous i e an independent stock variable which in principle is controlled by the authorities whatever the plausibility of the exogeneity assumption for certain monetary regimes it is not general enough to capture all relevant aspects of the never ending debate about the neutrality of money in particular it does not fully capture the linkage between the money supply and the market supply and demand for credit prior to keynes general theory 1936 that linkage was at the centre of mainstream macroeconomics as the search for the macrofoundations of neoclassical theory centred on the rate of interest as the critical nexus between money and the real sphere leijonhufvud 1981 gave this focus its generic name the wicksell connection when he told the story how keynes replaced the wicksellian interest rate mechanism with his aggregate income mechanism cum liquidity preference in the general theory leijonhufvud concluded that many difficulties in modern macroeconomics stem from a neglect of coordination failures in the interestrate mechanism this paper is about a complementary neglect of endogenous money it draws attention therefore to alternative lines of thinking along the wicksell connection extending from wicksell to hayek and to the early stockholm school lindahl myrdal and ohlin after mapping out the common ground in the works of these authors see the references i point out a few differences which indicate the broad scope of the approach as well as some sources of old and modern trouble with it see also trautwein 1993 and 1994 finally i discuss a small selection of modern difficulties with the general microfoundations of endogenous money in the new keynesian and in the new classical branches

time inconsistency of protectionist programs protectionist trade policies have long been advocated as second best instruments to achieve certain national objectives in situations where there is a market imperfection in essence protection provides time and resources for firms to undertake cost reducing investments recently there has been an emergence of new arguments to justify the implementation of a national industrial policy to encourage investment and to ensure the competitiveness of targeted industries also at the theoretical level a new argument known as strategic trade policy has emerged according to this argument protectionism gives domestic firms strategic advantage against foreign firms to capture a greater share of export markets where rents are not competed away actually the performance of protectionist programs has been grim industries have not adapted and protection has had to be renewed again and again arguments justifying protection have avoided this issue by implicitly assuming that authorities can credibly precommit to eliminate protection this is a very strong assumption in fact government actions are not exogenous but they are rather the result of an optimization process or they are best responses to political pressures as stressed in the public choice literature 2 therefore if authorities capitulate to protectionist pressures in the present they are unlikely to resist them in the future in the event that the targeted firm would not have adapted the inability of authorities to precommit to the unconditional elimination of protection generates a trade off for the firm if during the program the firm does not invest sufficiently in cost

inequality the politics of redistribution and the tax mix political economy literature generally predicts a positive relationship between income inequality and redistribution however there is no clear empirical evidence supporting such a relationship by incorporating an informal sector that evades income taxes we account for the tax base effect that along with the political channel determines the equilibrium redistribution and tax mix we find a non monotonic relationship between inequality and redistribution and explore under which conditions an unequal society relies more heavily on indirect taxes to finance redistribution ultimately this paper shows the limitations of the income tax to finance redistribution in developing countries even when taxes are democratically chosen

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

dynamics of income distribution in this paper we have obtained closed form solutions in cass koopmans growth models with heterogeneous agents the relationship between the form of the production function and the dynamics of income distribution is made explicit we then use this relationship to determine what production structure is simultaneously consistent with facts on growth and income inequality our empirical findings give support to models with decreasing returns in the reproducible factor jel classification d3 o1 o4 dans ce memoire les auteurs obtiennent des solutions pour des modeles de croissance a la cass koopmans dans le cas ou les agents sont heterogenes on explicite la relation entre la forme de la fonction de production et la dynamique de la repartition des revenus on utilise alors cette relation pour determiner quelle structure de production est arrimee aux faits connus a la fois quant a la croissance economique et a la repartition des revenus les resultats empiriques supportent les modeles ou les rendements sur les acteurs de production reproductibles sont decroissants

do safeguard tariffs and antidumping duties open or close technology gaps abstract this paper examines how the country breadth of tariff protection can affect the technology adoption decisions of both domestic import competing and foreign exporting firms the contribution of the analysis is to show how firm level technology adoption changes under tariffs of different country breadth i show that a country specific tariff like an antidumping duty induces both domestic import competing firms and foreign exporting firms to adopt a new technology earlier than they would under free trade in contrast a broadly applied tariff like a safeguard can accelerate technology adoption by a domestic import competing firm but will slow down technology adoption by foreign exporting firms because safeguard tariffs can delay the foreign firm s adoption of new technology the worldwide welfare costs associated with using them may be larger than is generally believed

removal of farm subsidies in a regional economy a computable general equilibrium analysis the purpose of this article is to analyse the importance of farm subsidies for the extremadura economy to this end a computable general equilibrium model for this region is presented with which we analyse the economic effects caused by a simulated removal of these subsidies different scenarios involving the labour market rigidities and tax compensation are considered model parameters are determined by the procedure known as calibration using a social accounting matrix constructed for this economy the results clearly show the negative effects that this elimination would produce on the main micro and macroeconomic variables

linear sam models for inequality changes analysis an application to the extremadurian economy social accounting matrices are adequate databases for the economic modelling these matrices emphasize the role of households in the economy and so they usually disaggregate the household sector into several groups this disaggregation allows social accounting matrices to be used for diverse income distribution analysis the objective of this work is to use the linear sam models to study how inequality is modified by several exogenous injections of income the set of multipliers and indicators presented is applied to the economy of extremadura a region situated in the southwest of spain in particular together with the accounting multipliers two redistributed income matrices are presented to show how changes in final demand and in income transfers cause opposite effects in inequality for contrasting these results gini and theil indices are also used finally a major reduction in both would result from an appropriate re allocation of transfers

what do we know about global income inequality in this paper we review the recent literature on global interpersonal income inequality while all estimates agree that the level is very high with a gini of between 0 630 and 0 686 in the 1990s there is no consensus regarding the direction of change we discuss methodological issues including the use of national accounts versus survey based estimates of mean income or consumption and the choice of purchasing power parity exchange rates findings of a rise or fall in global income inequality are not robust across different estimation methods and datasets given the diversity of estimates and various sources of uncertainty including gaps and errors in the underlying data we conclude there is insufficient evidence to determine the direction of change in global interpersonal inequality in recent decades

estimating a wage curve for britain 1973 90 following a w phillips s 1958 original work on the united kingdom applied research on unemployment and wages has been dominated by the analysis of highly aggregated time series data sets however it has proved difficult with such methods to uncover statistically reliable models this paper adopts a different approach it uses macroeconomic data on 175 000 british workers from 1973 to 1990 to provide evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped relationship linking the level of pay to the local rate of unemployment the paper casts doubt on standard ideas in macroeconomics regional economics and labor economics copyright 1994 by royal economic society