are estimates of earnings inequality sensitive to measurement choices a case study of canada in the 1980s while it is necessary that researchers make choices in order to estimate inequality the reasons for the measurement choices and their impact on inequality estimates have not been widely assessed this paper uses canadian data from the 1980s to analyse whether inequality estimates are sensitive to common measurement choices seemingly minor technical choices about the treatment of outlying observations such as the use of top income coded data exclusion of very high and low observations and differences among data sets in the capture of very high observations affect estimates of inequality further the impact of the treatment of outlying observations on inequality estimates are at least as large as the impact of measurement choices of a conceptual nature such as the income definition and population selection the sensitivity of inequality estimates to measurement choices which often remain invisible affect inferences about the relative degree of inequality at a given point in time among countries and

vertical integration of local fuel producers into rural district heating systems climate impact and production costs farmers can use their own agricultural biomass residues for heat production in small scale systems enabling synergies between the district heating dh sector and agriculture the barriers to entry into the swedish heat market were extremely high as long as heat distribution were considered natural monopoly but were recently lowered due to the introduction of a regulated third party access tpa system in the dh sector this study assesses the potential impact on greenhouse gas emissions and cost based heat price in the dh sector when farmers vertically integrate into the heat supply chain and introduce more local and agricultural crops and residues into the fuel mix four scenarios with various degree of farmer integration were assessed using life cycle assessment lca methodology and by analysis of the heat production costs the results show that full integration of local farm and forest owners in the value chain can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower production costs heat price if there is an incentive to utilise local and agricultural fuels the results imply that farmer participation in the dh sector should be encouraged by e g eu rural development programmes

inequality in male and female earnings the role of hours and wages the authors decompose annual earnings into hours of work and hourly earnings and analyze male female differences in earnings inequality using canadian data their results indicate that the larger female inequality in earnings is due to a greater inequality in the distribution of hours of work the distributions of wages for men and women are either statistically indistinguishable or more equal for women the authors compare two data points 1988 and 1981 and find the same structure in the gender comparisons also changes between 1988 and 1981 in earnings inequality are generated from movements in the hours distributions copyright 1996 by mit press

transfer behavior in the health and retirement study measurement and the redistribution of resources within the family recent work by a number of economists has opened a debate about the role played by intergenerational transfers using the new health and retirement study hrs we are better able to address the issues involved contrary to the current literature on bequests we do not find that parents give transfers equally to all children rather we find that in the case of inter vivos transfers respondents give greaterfinancial assistance to their less well off children than to their children with higher incomes financial transfers to elderly parents are also found to be negatively related to the potential recipient s income these results hold both for the incidence of transfers and for the amounts in addition we allow for unobserved differences across families by estimating fixed effect models and find our results to be robust to these specifications a comparison of the hrs transfer data to other survey data demonstrates that the hrs is potentially quite useful for research on transfer behavior

the strategic bequest motive although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete we develop a simple model of strategic bequests in which a testator influences the decisions of his beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries actions the model generates falsifiable empirical predictions that are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers we present econometric and other evidence that strongly suggests that bequests are often used as compensation for services rendered by beneficiaries

inter vivos transfers and intergenerational exchange the surge of interest in intergenerational transfers in the past decade has sparked a debate over the motivation for them are transfers given out of altruism or part of an exchange while each motive is probably at work to some extent we know little about whether one motive predominates the question is relevant for issues concerning public income redistribution and inequality in the family but despite its importance empirical evidence about motives is scarce because of limited data we investigate a new data set the national survey of families and households which remedies many of the shortcomings of other data sets containing private transfer information we find that empirical patterns for inter vivos transfers i e transfers between living persons are more consistent with exchange than altruism

changes in the distribution of individual earnings in the united states 1967 1986 using micro data from the current population survey the author examines the sensitivity of conclusion regarding time series changes in inequality to the measure of inequality employed and to the population group analyzed although changes in inequality over time are sensitive to the measure of inequality the author finds a general pattern of stable or decreasing inequality throughout the 1970s followed by a period of increasing inequality based upon a decomposition analysis the author concludes that these changes are not simply the results of the changing employment distribution among groups defined by sex age education or industry instead the rise in inequality results from an increase in inequality within these groups copyright 1992 by mit press

inequality in five countries in the 1980s the role of demographic shifts markets and government policies this paper uses luxembourg income study lis data to examine levels of and trends in income inequality in canada the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states inequality increased in sweden the united kingdom and the united states but did not increase in canada and the netherlands increased inequality of household heads earnings and increased shares of spouses earnings in family income account for much of the observed increases in income inequality the public sector can in general be assigned a moderating effect on these changes demographic shifts are not assigned any major role in inequality changes excerpt

market aspects in product life cycle inventory methodology abstract in planning a product life cycle inventory analysis the correct choice of methodology often depends on market information this paper discusses a number of points in the life cycle inventory methodology choice of product alternatives geographical system boundaries technological levels and co product allocation rules where the market aspect becomes obvious and where a disregard for these aspects may lead to serious flaws in the results

computerisation and wage dispersion an analytical reinterpretation the rich countries have recently seen a dramatic rise in income inequality all the more surprising because the long term trend had been toward equality this paper examines one of the leading explanations computerisation in the workplace i offer a theory of computers impact on white collar work which goes far toward explaining the timing form and locus of recent labour market changes the theory looks at the bureaucratic and organisational applications of computers that have been first largest and most influential they have two effects on firms demand for labour at different skill levels

macroanalysis of the economic and environmental impacts of a 2005 2025 european union bioenergy policy using the gtap model and life cycle assessment abstract this paper describes a new tool to assess the medium and long term economic and environmental impacts of large scale policies the approach macro life cycle assessment m lca is based on life cycle assessment methodology and includes additional elements to model economic externalities and the temporal evolution of background parameters the general equilibrium model gtap was therefore used to simulate the economic consequences of policies in a dynamic framework representing the temporal evolution of macroeconomic and technological parameters environmental impacts expressed via four indicators human health ecosystems global warming and natural resources are computed according to policy life cycle and its indirect economic consequences in order to illustrate the approach two 2005 2025 european union eu energy policies were compared using m lca the first policy the bioenergy policy aims to significantly increase energy generation from biomass and reduce eu energy demand for coal the second policy the baseline policy is a business as usual policy where year 2000 energy policies are extended to 2025 results show that compared to the baseline policy the bioenergy policy generates fewer impacts on three of the four environmental indicators human health global warming and natural resources at the world and eu scales though the results may differ significantly at a regional level the results also highlight the key contribution of economic growth to the total environmental impacts computed for the 2005 2025 period a comparison of the results with a more conventional consequential lca approach illustrates the benefits of m lca when modeling the indirect environmental impacts of large scale policies the sensitivity and uncertainty analysis indicates that the method is quite robust however its robustness must still be evaluated based on the sensitivity and uncertainty of additional parameters including the evolution of economic growth

why do global long term scenarios for agriculture differ an overview of the agmip global economic model intercomparison recent studies assessing plausible futures for agricultural markets and global food security have had contradictory outcomes to advance our understanding of the sources of the differences 10 global economic models that produce long term scenarios were asked to compare a reference scenario with alternate socioeconomic climate change and bioenergy scenarios using a common set of key drivers several key conclusions emerge from this exercise first for a comparison of scenario results to be meaningful a careful analysis of the interpretation of the relevant model variables is essential for instance the use of real world commodity prices differs widely across models and comparing the prices without accounting for their different meanings can lead to misleading results second results suggest that once some key assumptions are harmonized the variability in general trends across models declines but remains important for example given the common assumptions of the reference scenario models show average annual rates of changes of real global producer prices for agricultural products on average ranging between 0 4 and 0 7 between the 2005 base year and 2050 this compares to an average decline of real agricultural prices of 4 p a between the 1960s and the 2000s several other common trends are shown for example relating to key global growth areas for agricultural production and consumption third differences in basic model parameters such as income and price elasticities sometimes hidden in the way market behavior is modeled result in significant differences in the details fourth the analysis shows that agro economic modelers aiming to inform the agricultural and development policy debate require better data and analysis on both economic behavior and biophysical drivers more interdisciplinary modeling efforts are required to cross fertilize analyses at different scales

intergenerational transfers and savings in recent years the role of intergenerational transfers in the process of wealth accumulation has been the subject of substantial empirical and theoretical analysis the key question stimulating this research is what is the main explanation for savings is it primarily accumulation for retirement as claimed by albert ando richard brumberg and franco modigliani in their celebrated life cycle model of savings is it primarily intentional accumulation for intergenerational transfers or is it primarily precautionary savings much of which may be bequeathed because of imperfections in annuity markets this paper examines a range of findings on the importance of intergenerational transfers the strong conclusion that emerges from this evidence is that intergenerational transfers play a very important if not a key role in aggregate wealth accumulation while intergenerational transfers figure very large in savings the precise motivation for such transfers is unclear intergenerational altruism might appear the most likely candidate but at least sane stylized facts such as the equal allocation of bequests among children are strongly at adds with the altruism model other explanations involving imperfect insurance arrangements or payments for child services do not appear capable of explaining the substantial amounts of transfers actually observed sorting cut the relative contributions of different models to intergenerational transfers and the precise role of intergenerational transfers in the process of wealth accumulation remains an intriguing and exciting enterprise this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

variance estimators of the gini coefficient probability sampling an estimator of the gini coefficient the well known income inequality measure of a finite population is defined for an arbitrary probability sampling design taking the sampling design into consideration alternative estimators of the variance of the estimated gini coefficient are introduced the sampling performance of the gini coefficient estimator and its variance estimators is studied by means of a monte carlo study using stratified sampling from a miniature population of swedish households with authentic income data

simple and complex gift exchange in the laboratory we examine an experimental gift exchange game in which the players can improve upon the unique no gifts equilibrium through cooperative gift giving the main feature of the study is that there are two different types of gift exchange which we call simple and complex exchange respectively complex exchange gives higher payoffs than simple exchange but it requires not only mutual trust like simple exchange but also a substantial degree of coordination we examine whether players are able to conclude simple and complex exchanges and how this is affected by the move and matching structure of the game

consequential life cycle assessment of bioenergy systems a literature review abstract policies and business decisions intended to promote the use of bioenergy should be based on accurate estimates of the sustainability impacts of various alternatives including indirect consequences of any change consequential life cycle assessment clca attempts to include such impacts in the analysis this paper reviews studies that have adopted a clca approach to analysing the use of bioenergy describing their main topics approaches empirical and methodological aspects and scenarios the review finds that the production of studies proceeded at a modest pace from 2007 with a significant increase occurring from 2015 onward the most studied impact is global warming potential gwp although other impacts are frequently taken into consideration a majority of the studies concern the agricultural followed by the forest sector the literature has a european emphasis and relatively few studies have focused on low and middle income countries the review also finds a diversity in terms of how empirical and methodological aspects are taken into consideration based on the findings of the review areas of improvement for future research are suggested an increased focus on bioenergy use in the household sectors more studies in under researched regions more precise explanations of the clca methods used a critical examination of the scenarios and methodological collaboration with economic bio sector modelling in addition the factors that affect the generalizability of the results can be discussed in a more systematic manner frameworks and procedures for improving the applicability and validity of clca will likely emerge as the research field develops

motives for private income transfers private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the u s economy the majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos i e between living persons but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior this paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers two motives are considered altruism and exchange evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange related motives this finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well being

are family transfers crowded out by public transfers we give an account of an overlapping generations experiment with multiple families in which voluntary transfers can take the form of support to the elderly or grants to children support to the old is a purely intergenerational intra family transfer whereas grants to children also involve an element of intra generational inter family redistribution through a compulsory pension system our data show that higher compulsory inter family transfers lead subjects to place relatively more emphasis on support instead of grants grants are crowded out but support is not significantly affected the efficiency of voluntary transfers increases however furthermore if subjects give transfers they do not use tokens of direct reciprocity evidence of indirect reciprocity in transfer behavior can only be obtained for the case where compulsory transfers are high

parental altruism and inter vivos transfers theory and evidence this paper uses psid data on the extended family to test whether inter vivos transfers from parents to children are motivated by altruism specifically the paper tests whether an increase by one dollar in the income of parents actively making transfers to a child coupled with a one dollar reduction in that child s income results in the parents increasing their transfer to the child by one dollar this restriction on parental and child transfer income derivatives is derived for the standard altruism model augmented to include uncertainty and liquidity constraints these additional elements pin down the timing of inter vivos transfers the method used to estimate income transfer derivatives takes into account unobserved heterogeneity across families in the degree of altruism the findings strongly reject the altruism hypothesis redistributing one dollar from a recipient child to donor parents leads to less than a 13 cent increase in the parents transfer to the child far less than the one dollar increas

accounting for heterogeneity diversity and general equilibrium in evaluating social programmes this paper considers the merits and limitations of alternative criteria proposed to evaluate social programmes in the modern welfare state and the information required to implement them when individual responses to programmes are heterogeneous participation in programmes is based in part on this heterogeneity and the programmes have general equilibrium impacts on the economy particular attention is devoted to the voting criterion used in modern positive political economy and the ranking of alternative social states based on anonymity postulates evidence on heterogeneity is presented conflicts among the criteria are revealed in two empirical studies partial equilibrium approaches are shown to be misleading

transposing lessons between different forms of consequential greenhouse gas accounting lessons for consequential life cycle assessment project level accounting and policy level accounting abstract greenhouse gas accounting has developed in a number of semi isolated fields of practice and there appears to be considerable opportunity for transposing methodological innovations and lessons between these different fields this research paper identifies three consequential forms of greenhouse gas accounting consequential life cycle assessment project level accounting and policy level accounting these methods are described in detail and then compared in order to identify the key methodological differences and the potential lessons that can be transposed between them analysis of the substantive methodological differences suggests that consequential life cycle assessment could be enhanced by adopting the same structure used in project and policy level accounting which provides a time series of impacts aggregate level analysis and a transparent specification of the baseline and decision scenarios there is a case for conceptualising a unified form of consequential time series assessment of which project policy and product assessments would be sub types

cooperation in an overlapping generations experiment abstract recent theoretical work shows that folk theorems can be developed for infinite overlapping generations games cooperation in such games can be sustained as a nash equilibrium but of course there are other equilibria this paper investigates experimentally whether cooperation actually occurs in a simple overlapping generations game subjects both play the game and formulate strategies our main finding is that subjects fail to exploit the intertemporal structure of the game even when we provided subjects with a recommendation to play the grim trigger strategy most of the subjects still employed safe history independent strategies journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c92 d90

intergenerational transfers and the accumulation of wealth h t ouseholds acquire wealth from two sources they save out of income they have earned and they receive transfers from other people the first method of wealth accumulation goes under the name of life cycle saving in which people save during their working lives and dissave after retirement the second involves either an inter vivos transfer that is a transfer between living people or a bequest a transfer that occurs at the death of the donor while inter vivos transfers and bequests will arise in dynastic models where preferences include a taste for the well being of one s descendents few empirical life cycle models reflect these concerns indeed a sharp debate has arisen over the ability of the simple life cycle model to explain observed wealth accumulation understanding the relative sizes of these sources of wealth accumulation affects a variety of issues for example the effects of government debt social insurance public transfer programs estate taxes and incentives for charitable giving depend to some extent on the magnitude and nature of private saving and transfers of wealth analyses of the inequality of wealth may depend on whether most of wealth is earned or received as transfers appropriate policies for encouraging private saving may look rather different depending on whether most saving is to be consumed later in life or passed along to the next generation finally evidence on transfer patterns relates to more fundamental

changes in the distribution of wages in canada 1981 1992 this article uses microdata to study the changes in the distribution of weekly wages in canada from 1981 to 1992 changes in the distribution are analyzed using lorenz curves and eight different univariate measures of inequality evidence is presented that indicates that inequality is anticyclical increasing during recessions and falling during business cycle expansions moreover after changes in the cycle are accounted for there has been a clear upward trend in wage inequality comparisons between the canadian and the u s distributions show that wage inequality was less pronounced in canada than it was in the united states in the 1980s and was increasing in canada relative to the united states from 1989 to 1992

assessing non marginal variations with consequential lca application to european energy sector many policies are being designed to mitigate impacts of human activities on the environment an environmental evaluation of these policies should include assessments of their impacts according to all known environmental impacts moreover because policies may indirectly affect regions or economic sectors not initially targeted by these policies indirect environmental consequences should be included in environmental balances life cycle analysis lca is a holistic method made to assess environmental impacts caused by products or services according to various environmental damage categories however the ability of lca to model environmental consequences due to a change is restricted to marginal changes occurring in small life cycles new methodological developments are needed to study major changes and their environmental consequences as they may happen when a policy is applied at large scale for that purpose the economic general equilibrium model gtap has been used to predict global economic perturbation that would be caused by two different european energy policies bioenergy policy and business as usual policy lca was then used to assess environmental impacts due to european energy generation and perturbation of world economy despite the bioenergy policy involves more energy from renewable technologies which are expected to be less polluting results show that due to rebound effects bioenergy policy results in more environmental impacts combining both gtap and lca improves environmental assessment made with gtap because it allows computing environmental impacts according to products life cycles instead of using economic sector emission factors and because emissions and extractions from environment are related to impacts on environment regarding lca method this new approach allows studying significant changes affecting large systems with a global modeling of economy in a time dependent environment however more work is needed to evaluate this new approach especially uncertainty should be studied