what drives the cross country growth and inequality correlation we present a neo classical model that explores the determinants of growth inequality correlation and attempts to reconcile the seemingly conflicting evidence on the nature of the growth inequality relationship the initial distribution of human capital determines the long run income distribution and the growth rate by influencing the occupational choice of the agents the steady state proportion of adults that innovates and updates human capital is path dependent the output elasticity of skilled labour barriers to knowledge spillovers and the degree of redistribution determine the range of steady state equilibria from a calibration experiment we report that a skill intensive technology low barriers to knowledge spillovers and high degrees of redistribution characterize the industrial countries with a positive growth inequality correlation a negative correlation between growth and inequality arises for the group of non industrial countries with the opposite characteristics jel classification e1 o4 qu est ce qui sous tend la correlation transversale entre la croissance des pays et son niveau d inegalite on presente un modele neo classique qui explore les determinants de la correlation croissance inegaliteet on tente de reconcilier les resultats qui semblent contra dictoires ace propos la distribution initiale de capital humain determine la distribution des revenus along terme et le taux de croissance en influant sur le choix occupationnel des agents

are consumption taxes really better than income taxes abstract we use political equilibrium theory and the neoclassical growth model to compare consumption and income tax systems if government outlays are used for redistribution through transfers then steady state equilibria in societies that use income taxes are not necessarily worse in welfare terms and may even be better income taxes are attractive precisely because they are more distortionary since this implies low equilibrium transfer levels we also find that switching tax systems typically does not benefit the median voter moreover a change from income to consumption taxes may make everybody worse off

corruption and government size a disaggregated analysis using annual state level data over 1983 1987 this paper examines the effect of government size on corruption by public officials by including both demand and supply side incentives for engaging in corrupt practices our objectives are twofold first we assess the relationship between the incidence of corruption and overall measures of the size of the federal government and the state local sector in each state second we explore what kinds of government activities are more likely to be successful in deterring abuse of public office our results are generally supportive of becker s crime and punishment model regarding the primary focus of the paper our results show that government size in particular spending by state governments does indeed have a strong positive influence on corruption

does right or left matter cabinets credibility and fiscal adjustments abstract this paper tests the widely held assumption that left wing cabinets favor higher public spending and examines whether cabinet ideology affects the persistence of major fiscal adjustments in a panel of large fiscal adjustments in oecd countries during the last 40 years we find evidence that left wing and right wing cabinets are partisan the left tends to reduce the deficit by raising tax revenues while the right relies mostly on spending cuts our testable hypothesis is that cabinets can signal commitment by undertaking fiscal adjustments in ways that are not favored by their constituencies in other words the left gains credibility when it cuts spending while the right becomes more credible when it increases tax revenues probit estimates of the determinants of persistence in fiscal adjustments confirm that spending cuts by the left and tax increases by the right are associated with persistent adjustments the effect is significant for cuts in public spending public consumption wage or nonwage increases in total revenues direct taxes on businesses and other taxes we test for the role of several other determinants of persistence confirming that coalition and majority cabinets are associated with less persistence while periods of high or rising levels of indebtedness favor persistence the estimates of the impact of ideology and other variables on gdp and its components show that it is the size of the spending cut rather than cabinet ideology that is most important

inequality in the globalizing asia this article investigates the impact of globalization on the inequality of asia it is the first attempt to examine 11 asian countries panel data allowing nonlinearity between globalization and inequality from 1960 to 2003 with robustness check we also survey the literature on growth globalization and inequality and reflect their endogenous relationships to our article we found the significant turning point of globalization at which inequality starts decreasing as further globalization proceeds it will offer us policy implications for the ongoing process of globalization in the asian economies

decentralization and corruption evidence from u s federal transfer programs while some recent evidence suggests that more decentralization is associated with reduced corruption no empirical work has examined whether different types of decentraliz ation have differential effects on corruption the theoretical literature has emphasized that expenditure decentralization will only be effective if accompanied by the devolution of rev enue generation to local governments in this paper we examine this hypothesis empirically by studying the mismatch between revenue generation and expenditure in u s states larger federal transfers are associated with higher rates of conviction for abuse of public office supporting the theory that soft budget constraints created by federal transfers are potentially problematic

a distributional theory of government growth this article presents a closed form solution for time consistent taxation and public spending in a dynamic game between government and median voter extending meltzer and richard s static analysis of government size the article offers a theory of growth of government at low stages of economic development the median voter identified as a relatively poor worker prefers to have no or only small redistributive taxation in order to foster savings through this channel he expects improvements of his labor productivity and wage at higher stages of development however when capital is relatively abundant and prospects of further labor productivity gains through capital accumulation are smaller the incentive to tax and redistribute income rises yet in line with previous work on growth and infrastructure spending the median voter prefers a constant share of productive public spending at all times hence government growth is solely driven by an expanding welfare state

corruption a review as is increasingly recognised in academic literature and by international organisations corruption acts as a major deterrent to growth and development the aim of this survey is to organise and summarise existing theoretical and empirical work on corruption with a view to identifying opportunities for further research the paper begins with a brief overview of key definitions of corruption and then turns to a review of the factors that favour or deter the growth of corruption together with a brief look at related models this is followed by an examination of the consequences of corruption for society and the consideration of measures that might help to reduce corruption the paper ends with suggestions for future research and includes summaries of data sources and key variables for use in this research

corruption in america abstract we use a data set of federal corruption convictions in the u s to investigate the causes and consequences of corruption more educated states and to a smaller degree richer states have less corruption this relationship holds even when we use historical factors like congregationalism in 1890 as an instrument for the level of schooling today the level of corruption is also correlated with the level of income inequality and racial fractionalization and uncorrelated with the size of government there is a weak negative relationship between corruption and economic development in a state these results echo the cross country findings and support the view that the correlation between development and good political outcomes occurs because education improves political institutions

oligarchy democracy inequality and growth abstract this paper analyses the dynamics of inequality democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation in a context with imperfect capital markets we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor s education and to initiate a democratic transition we characterize the equilibrium patterns of political institutions income distribution and growth as a function of the initial income and inequalities in particular we identify circumstances under which the elite promotes the endogenous emergence of a middle class for purely political economy reasons a simple linear infinite horizon framework is then presented in this setting we discuss the importance of historical dependence for long run social stratification and redistribution

earthquake fatalities the interaction of nature and political economy to say that the level of fatalities resulting from an earthquake is inversely related to a country s per capita level of income is hardly novel what makes our approach novel is that we relate fatalities to both per capita income and the level of inequality that exists within a country through their joint impact on the likelihood of collective action being taken to mitigate the destructive potential of quakes we first develop a theoretical model which offers an explanation as to why in some environments different segments of society prove incapable of arriving at what all parties perceive to be an agreeable distribution of the burden of the necessary collective action causing the relatively wealthy simply to self insure against the disaster while leaving the relatively poor to its mercy following this we test our theoretical model by evaluating 269 large earthquakes occurring worldwide between 1960 and 2002 taking into account other factors that influence a quake s destructiveness such as its magnitude depth and proximity to population centers using a negative binomial estimation strategy with both random and fixed estimators we find strong evidence of the theoretical model s predictions that is while earthquakes themselves are natural phenomena beyond the reach of humankind our collective inaction with respect to items like the creation and enforcement of building codes failure to retrofit structures and to enact quake sensitive zoning clearly plays a part in determining the actual toll that a given quake takes and it is through these and other examples of collective inaction that limited per capita income and inequality couple together with a given quake s natural destructive power in determining the actual fatalities resulting from a quake

default settlement and signalling lending resumption in a reputational model of sovereign debt this paper develops a simple model of sovereign debt in which defaulting nations are excluded from capital markets and regain access by making partial repayments this implication of the model is consistent with the historical evidence that defaulting countries return to international loan markets soon after a settlement but after varying periods of exclusion copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

effects of patent policy on income and consumption inequality in a r d growth model what are the effects of strengthening patent protection on income and consumption inequality to analyze this question this paper incorporates heterogeneity in the initial wealth of households into a canonical quality ladder growth model with endogenous labor supply in this model i firstly show that the aggregate economy always jumps immediately to a unique and stable balanced growth path given the balanced growth behavior of the aggregate economy and an exogenous distribution of initial wealth i then show that the endogenous distribution of assets in subsequent periods is stationary and equal to its initial distribution the model predicts that strengthening patent protection increases a economic growth by stimulating r d investment and b income inequality by raising the return on assets however whether it also increases consumption inequality depends on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution if and only if this elasticity is less greater than unity strengthening patent protection increases decreases consumption inequality for standard parameter values strengthening patent protection leads to a larger increase in income inequality than consumption inequality

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

debt relief and debtor outcomes measuring the effects of consumer bankruptcy protection consumer bankruptcy is one of the largest social insurance programs in the united states but little is known about its impact on debtors we use 500 000 bankruptcy filings matched to administrative tax and foreclosure data to estimate the impact of chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on subsequent outcomes exploiting the random assignment of bankruptcy filings to judges we find that chapter 13 protection increases annual earnings by 5 562 decreases five year mortality by 1 2 percentage points and decreases five year foreclosure rates by 19 1 percentage points these results come primarily from the deterioration of outcomes among dismissed filers not gains by granted filers jel d14 i12 j22 j31 k35

transitional dynamics and the distribution of wealth in a neoclassical growth model abstract the evolution of the personal distribution of wealth in a standard neoclassical growth model is studied if the economy is growing toward the steady state and preferences are such that marginal utility from consumption is infinite finite at some all positive non negative consumption level s then the average saving propensity of agents is positively negatively related to their wealth if the economy is decaying toward the steady state these relationships are reversed if wealth and average saving propensity are positively negatively related the distribution of current period wealth lorenz dominates is lorenz dominated by next period s distribution of wealth

the aging population and the size of the welfare state is there a puzzle abstract razin sadka and swagel razin asaf efraim sadka and phillip swagel 2002 the aging population and the size of the welfare state the journal of political economy vol 110 no 4 pp 900 918 unveil a puzzling fact the welfare state appears to be shrinking even as the dependency ratio rises while they formulate an elegant political economy model to explain the coexistence of an aging population and declining transfers the resolution of the puzzle turns out to be much simpler labor tax rates and per capita transfers are negatively correlated with the dependency ratio in advanced economies only because this measure includes children as well as retirees both labor tax rates and per capita transfers in advanced economies are in fact historically positively correlated with the ratio of retirees to the working age population and negatively correlated with the ratio of children to the working age population increasing the number of retirees shifts preferences toward higher taxes and transfers by increasing the fraction of the population that receives transfers in contrast workers with more children prefer to spend more of their lifetime income while raising dependents so they prefer smaller public pension systems these results suggest that fiscal leakage from workers to retirees is not required to explain the broad trends in the transfer policies of advanced economies

on the faustian dynamics of policy and political power this paper examines the faustian dynamics of policy and power we posit a general class of dy namic games in which current policies affect the future distribution of political power resulting in the following faustian trade off if the current ruler chooses his preferred policy he then sacrifices future political power yet if he wants to preserve his future power he must sacrifice his present policy objec tives the trade off comes from the fact that the current political ruler pivotal voter cannot uncouple the direct effect of his policy from its indirect effect on future power a policy endogenous pe equilibrium describes this endogenous transfer of power and the resulting evolution of policy and political power over time we show that the faustian trade off in a pe equilibrium is decomposed into two basic rationales the political preservation effect induces more tempered policy choices than if one s policy choice did not affect one s political fortunes however the reformation effect induces more aggressive policies in order to exploit the productivity gains from policies chosen by even more aggressive successors we distinguish between political systems that give rise to monotone faustian dynamics political power that progressively evolves towards more fiscally liberal types of leaders and cyclical faustian dynamics political power that oscillates between liberal and conservative types of leaders in each case we show that the faustian trade off moderates the choices of each type of leader

national pro poor spending programmes and their effect on income inequality and poverty evidence from vietnam abstractthis article examines the causal effects of the national pro poor targeted programmes ntps on both poverty incidence and inequality in vietnam over the period 2002 2010 while the links between ntps and poverty alleviation and income inequality have previously been analysed independently this study is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of ntps expenditure on poverty and inequality simultaneously applying the system generalized method of moments estimator to a panel of vietnamese regional data we are unable to establish that ntps have significantly mitigated poverty incidence however we estimate that ntps have significantly increased inequality we offer possible explanations why the ntps have resulted in these unintended outcomes and discuss potential policies which can reduce both poverty and inequality

personal bankruptcy and credit supply and demand this paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit while generous state level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policy makers as benefiting less well off borrowers our results using data from the 1983 survey of consumer finances suggest that they increase the amount of credit held by high asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low asset households conditioning on observable characteristics thus bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets interest rates on automobile loans for low asset households also appear to be higher in high exemption states

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

politico economic equilibrium and economic growth abstract we propose a notion of dynamic politico economic equilibrium which builds on two key assumptions policies are determined sequentially and agents are fully rational in their roles as both consumers and voters we examine a simple model of endogenous growth and infinitely lived agents where taxes on income are endogenous and where growth critically depends on the initial distribution of asset holdings we relate our equilibrium definition and results to existing literature on time consistency and on political economy and growth we show that our equilibria are time consistent and we argue that the choice of equilibrium concept might have important quantitative implications

factor income distribution and endogenous economic growth piketty meets romer what is the relationship between the economy s long run growth rate its capital income ratio and its factor income distribution a satisfactory answer requires an endogenous growth and savings rate we scrutinize piketty s 2014 theory in a richly parameterized variant of romer s 1990 seminal model with and without population growth the economy s growth and savings rate are exogenous in piketty s theory and endogenous in romer s in contrast to piketty s second fundamental law of capitalism a smaller growth rate may be associated with a smaller capital income ratio moreover it may go together with a greater or a smaller capital share jel e10 e21 e25 o33 o41

who gets credit after bankruptcy and why an information channel abstract conventional wisdom holds that individuals find it difficult to obtain new credit post bankruptcy using credit bureau data we test this hypothesis and show that more than 90 of bankrupt individuals receive credit shortly after filing individuals with good credit history prior to filing have reduced credit availability after bankruptcy while those with ex ante low credit quality receive more credit we show that credit supplied to low quality individuals is severely curtailed during the financial crisis we also find that the default probability on new debt increases after bankruptcy especially among individuals with high ex ante credit score these findings are consistent with an information channel in which bankruptcy reveals new information about a borrower s credit quality

compensations as signaling devices in the political economy of reforms we propose an explanation for why efficient reforms are not carried out when losers can block their implementation and compensations are feasible in our model a government tries to sequentially implement two efficient reforms by bargaining with interest groups the organization of interest groups is endogenous compensations are distortionary and different governments care differently about distortions governments use low compensations to discourage losers who just want to receive transfers from organizing this comes at the cost of reforms being blocked by interest groups with relatively high losses resulting in a bias against payment of compensations and the implementation of reforms

pecuniary emulation inequality and growth abstract we study a two class growth model in which agents care about both consumption and the social perception of their wealth rank the latter determines the social status enjoyed by agents social perceptions are based upon noisy signals of wealth and in equilibrium there is incomplete separation of classes the steady growth rate of the economy increases with the full information status differential between classes and contrary to the growth model without status it is affected by the initial level of wealth inequality both too much equality and too much inequality are detrimental to economic growth

political equilibrium income distribution and growth this paper analyzes the impact of income distribution on growth when investment in human capital is the source of growth and individuals vote over the degree of redistribution in the economy the model has three main features first very different patterns of income distribution are conducive to high growth at different levels of per capita income second growth is associated with an externality whereby investment in human capital by one group increases the productivity of other groups thus potentially enabling them to invest in human capital third the initial pattern of income distribution and the resulting political equilibrium are crucial in determining whether the transmission of this externality is promoted in which case growth is enhanced or prevented in which case growth is stopped using a non overlapping generations model with voting i derive several empirical implications in particular the model implies an inverted u relation between levels of inequality and levels of income in cross sections but not necessarily in time series a result that seems consistent with a number of empirical studies

increasing returns and increasing rates of growth romer 1986b documented that industrial economies have tended to have growth rates that increase over time having explained why the aggregate growth models of ramsey 1928 cass 1965 and koopmans 1965 fail to account for this observation romer proposed an alternative view of long run prospects for growth combining three elements externalities increasing returns in the production of output and decreasing returns in the production of new knowledge he constructed an equilibrium model of growth in his infinite horizon continuous time analysis qualitative conclusions were reached using the geometry of the phase plane no examples with an explicit dynamic solution were given the present paper provides a fully worked out example that fills this gap and that can serve as a confirmation of romer s claim that monotonically increasing growth rates for the capital stock and for consumption can arise in the framework he specified this paper also presents an example that can generate increasing growth rates without imposing some of the restrictions essential to romer s model those restrictions are not appealing on economic grounds and were added to his paper purely for technical reasons any infinite horizon model with increasing returns to scale must impose some restrictions to ensure the existence of both a social optimum and a competitive equilibrium otherwise the discounted sum of utility could go to infinity romer 1986b used a production function of the form f k k akvkw with v y 1 where k is the capital stock at the level of the firm and k is aggregate capital the

is there a double bonus from reducing inequality i introduction in the 1990s a number of empirical studies found an economically and statistically significant negative relationship between inequality and long run growth a huge literature that has investigated the effect of inequality on growth much of it emphasizes the negative effect can be broadly classified into three branches 1 the first branch of the literature regards an endogenously determined redistributive policy as a catalyst bertola 1993 persson and tabellini 1994 it asserts that in more unequal economies greater distortion because of higher redistributive tax which is determined endogenously by vote is likely to impede more investment the second branch of the literature argues that more inequality will lead to more sociopolitical instability which in turn will discourage investment alesina and rodrik 1994 benhabib and rustichini 1996 grossman and kim 1996 the third branch of the literature focuses on investment in human capital 2 these papers show that when credit markets are imperfect more inequality implies less people being able to invest in human capital which in turn implies slower growth the idea that low income inequality and high long run growth are consistent objectives appeared to be a common agreement until the late 1990s when it started being challenged by the empirical literature for instance forbes 2000 and li and zou 1998 although their focus is the effect in the short run 5 10 years showed the positive effect of initial inequality on growth burro 2000 and deininger and squire 1998 separate their samples into two according to some criteria such as an income level or a degree of democracy suggest the nonmonotonic effects of inequality on subsequent growth banerjee and duflo 2003 also cast a doubt on the validity of a linear structure that is assumed in the empirical literature assessing the relationship between inequality and growth in the meantime the third branch of the literature mentioned earlier has been extended by incorporating endogenous fertility this new strand of the literature postulates that fertility and investment in human capital are jointly determined by the individuals optimizing behavior 3 and emphasizes the fertility difference between the rich and poor it claims that more unequal economies have higher fertility differentials accumulate less human capital and hence have lower economic growth 4 the endogenous fertility literature appears to reemphasize the negative effect of initial inequality on subsequent growth in this paper we hope to further extend the literature by arguing that the effect of inequality on growth can be non monotonic even when the fertility differential is taken into account to this end we employ an overlapping generations olg model that follows a model by ehrlich and lui 1991 hereafter e l a representative agent in their model maximizes her his utility by choosing how much to invest in quality and quantity of human capital caring about current and future consumption as well as companionship by her his children in the future in contrast to e l who focus only on the representative agent we look at heterogeneous dynasties that comprise an economy by allowing education to have external effects we define an economy as a set of dynasties that can affect one another through externality in education it turns out that a dynasty s behavior differs according to the human capital stock it inherits as well as the economy s average level of human capital hence the initial distribution of human capital in an economy has strong implications for subsequent growth of that economy our main interest is to assess from our theoretical model how inequality affects long run growth of an economy say over 25 years however this is a somewhat tricky exercise because 25 years correspond to only one generation in our three period olg model

on efficiency and distribution this paper is a theoretical study of alternative ways of allocating resources in an exchange economy in which individual preferences are subject to unpredictable shocks that cannot be monitored efficiency in this economy requires wealth inequality to increase over time the paper is based on the author s 1991 harry johnson lecture copyright 1992 by royal economic society

education economic growth and measured income inequality in this paper education simultaneously affects growth and income inequality more education does not necessarily decrease inequality when the latter is assessed by the lorenz dominance criterion increases in education first increase and then decrease growth as well as income inequality when measured by the gini coefficient there is no clear functional relationship between growth and measured income inequality the model identifies regimes of this relationship which depend crucially on the production and schooling technology conventional growth regressions with human capital and inequality as regressors may miss the richness of the underlying nonlinearities but viewed as approximations may still provide important information on the nonlinear relationship between growth and education

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

what happens when information leaves a market evidence from postbankruptcy consumers federal law mandates the removal of personal bankruptcies from credit reports after 10 years the removal s effect is market efficiency in reverse the short term effect is a spurious boost in apparent creditworthiness especially for the more creditworthy bankrupts delivering a substantial increase in both credit scores and the number and aggregate limit of bank cards the longer term effect is lower scores and higher delinquency than initial full information scores predict these findings relate to both the debate over the bankruptcy code and the wisdom of influencing market clearing by removing information

income inequality government expenditures and growth this paper investigates the relationship between income inequality and growth by utilizing the recently published deininger squire data set most of the recent empirical growth literature suggests a negative relationship between inequality and growth on the basis of reduced form growth equations this is also found in the author s study some effort is made to discuss the argument behind the perceived negative relationship between inequality and growth according to the fiscal policy approach a high level of income inequality leads to a higher demand for redistribution which in turn affects growth through resource allocation out of investment or through incentive distorting taxes needed to fund the redistribution it is suggested that the last mentioned relationship between government expenditure and growth is more likely to be non linear positive with small amounts and negative with large amounts such a relationship however is only found for public goods thus government expenditure on law and ord

an empirical analysis of personal bankruptcy and delinquency this article uses a new dataset of credit card accounts to analyze credit card delinquency personal bankruptcy and the stability of credit risk models we estimate duration models for default and assess the relative importance of different variables in predicting default we investigate how the propensity to default has changed over time disentangling the two leading explanations for the recent increase in default rates a deterioration in the risk composition of borrowers versus an increase in borrowers willingness to default due to declines in default costs even after controlling for risk composition and economic fundamentals the propensity to default significantly increased between 1995 and 1997 standard default models missed an important time varying default factor consistent with a decline in default costs debt issued by consumers is an understudied asset class there has been particularly little academic study of recent trends in default on this debt between 1994 and 1997 the number of personal bankruptcy filings in the united states rose by about 75 the 1 35 million filings in 1997 represented well over 1 of u s households delinquency rates on credit cards rose almost as sharply federal reserve bank of cleveland 1998 the resulting losses to lenders amounted to a sizable fraction of the interest payments they collect potentially raising the average cost of credit these trends in default both in bankruptcy and delinquency are especially surprising in light of the strong economy over the period they provide an unusually rich source of variation to test the stability of models that forecast personal default and of credit risk models more generally there are two leading explanations for these trends first the risk composition of borrowers might have worsened under the risk effect less

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

nonlinear capital taxation without commitment we study efficient nonlinear taxation of labor and capital in a dynamic mirrleesian model incorporating political economy constraints policies are chosen sequentially over time without commitment our main result is that the marginal tax on capital income is progressive in the sense that richer agents face higher marginal tax rates

the effect on income distribution of development the growth rate and economic strategy abstract an analysis of cross section and time series data for 83 countries confirms some and contradicts other work on income distribution new findings include a dualistic socio political system is highly unfavorable for equality neither the extent of government intervention in the economy nor the rate of manufactured exports are systematically related to income distribution the analysis confirms that there is no systematic relationship between equality and the rate of economic growth educational participation and a reduction in the share of primary exports in gdp are both favorable for equality there is some support for the kuznets hypothesis that inequality increases as per capita income rises to about 400 and then declines with further income increase but the empirical support is not strong and may be weakening over time these findings lead to more optimistic conclusions then other work that rapid growth in a mixed economy is quite consistent with unchanged or even improved income distribution even at early stages of development

economic inequality and its socioeconomic impact abstract income inequality is of fundamental interest not only to economists but also to other social scientists a substantial literature in economics and the social sciences has investigated the relationship between income inequality and economic growth and a variety of social phenomena the links between inequality and economic growth are explored as well as those between inequality and such key social variables as political conflict education health and crime the analysis in this paper follows a two step process first a review of the empirical evidence relating inequality to growth and to each of the above social variables is undertaken second the various causal mechanisms that have been proposed in the social science literature to explain those links are surveyed

distance and private information in lending we study the effects of physical distance on the acquisition and use of private information in informationally opaque credit markets using a unique data set of all loan applications by small firms to a large bank we show that borrower proximity facilitates the collection of soft information leading to a trade off in the availability and pricing of credit which is more readily accessible to nearby firms albeit at higher interest rates ceteris paribus analyzing loan rates and firms decision to switch lenders provides further evidence for banks strategic use of private information however distance erodes our lender s ability to collect proprietary intelligence and to carve out local captive markets suggesting that the requisite soft information is primarily local the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

consumer bankruptcy and financial health this paper estimates the effect of chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on financial health using a new data set linking bankruptcy filings to credit bureau records our empirical strategy uses the leniency of randomly assigned judges as an instrument for chapter 13 protection we find that chapter 13 protection decreases an index measuring adverse financial events such as civil judgments and repossessions by 0 323 standard deviations and increases the probability of being a homeowner by 13 2 percentage points chapter 13 protection has little impact on open unsecured debt but decreases the amount of debt in collections by 1 333

household borrowing after personal bankruptcy a large body of literature has examined factors leading to filing for personal bankruptcy but little is known about household borrowing after bankruptcy this paper augments the existing literature with a comprehensive analysis of postbankruptcy borrowing using data from the survey of consumer finances we find that filers generally have more limited access to unsecured credit but borrow more secured debt after bankruptcy than comparable households that have never filed for bankruptcy filers also pay higher interest rates on all types of debt in addition as more time passes after filing credit access and borrowing costs improve however filers remain more prone than comparable nonfilers to experience financial distress accumulate less wealth and use expensive credit sources like payday loans even more than 10 years after filing

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

the survival of the welfare state this paper provides an analytical characterization of markov perfect equilibria in a model with repeated voting where agents vote over distortionary income redistribution a key result is that the future constituency for redistributive policies depends positively on current redistribution since this affects both private investments and the future distribution of voters the model features multiple equilibria in some equilibria positive redistribution persists forever in other equilibria even a majority of beneficiaries of redistribution vote strategically so as to induce the end of the welfare state next period skill biased technical change makes the survival of the welfare state less likely

comments on dynamics of income distribution using the ramsey cass koopmans model with heterogeneous agents this note presents the explicit relationship between the individual s asset holding and the aggregate capital stock with the aid of this relationship is examined the dynamics of income distribution as the economy expands finally some examples are presented contrary to the conjecture made in li xie and zou 2000 showing that the income can still improve over time even when the aggregate production function is convex jel classification d3 o1 o4 commentaires sur dynamique de la distribution du revenu a l aide d un modele de type ramsey cass koopmans avec des agents heterogenes cette note presente la relation explicite entre le stock d actif detenu par l individu et le stock de capital agrege a l aide de cette relation on examine la dynamique de la distribution du revenu a proportion que l economie croit enfin certains exemples sont presentes qui contredisent la conjecture proposee par li xie et zou 2000 a savoir que le revenu peut s accroitre dans le temps meme quand la fonction de production agregee est convexe

on efficient distribution with private information this paper is a study of the dynamics of the efficient distribution of consumption in an exchange economy with many consumers each of whom is subject to private idiosyncratic taste shocks we propose a recursive method for finding feasible allocations that are incentivecompatible and that are pareto optimal within this set the method is applied to several parametric examples we find that in an efficient allocation the degree of inequality continually increases with a diminishing fraction of the population receiving an increasing fraction of the resources we discuss the extent to which these allocations can be decentralized via market arrangements this paper is a study of the dynamics of the efficient distribution of consumption in an exchange economy with private information the economy we study has a constant endowment flow of a single non storable consumption good which is to be allocated each period among a large number of consumers each period these consumers experience unpredictable idiosyncratic privately observed taste shocks affecting their marginal utility of current consumption efficiency dictates that more resources be allocated to those consumers who in any given period have a high marginal utility of current consumption

credit card redlining abstract this paper evaluates the presence of racial disparities in the issuance of consumer credit using a database of credit histories i link location based information on race with individual credit files after controlling for place specific factors such as housing vacancy rates and general population demographics i find qualitatively large differences in the amount of credit offered to similarly qualified applicants living in black versus white areas high data quality allows distinguishing between issuer provision supply and utilization of credit demand additional estimates using information on payday lending provide support for idea that issuers condition lending on location

divergence in economic performance transitional dynamics with multiple equilibria abstract special pairs of the utility functions and the production functions are used in this paper to uncover the transitional dynamics in a lucas model of growth the main findings are as follows a continuum of equilibria exists if the external effect of human capital in goods production is sufficiently large the process of lagging behind catching up with and overtaking that we often observe in the world economy can be explained finally some equilibrium paths are shown to have such complicated patterns that the dynamics conjectured by lucas are too simple to be correct journal of economic literature classification numbers o41 c61

the size and composition of government expenditure abstract this paper tests several leading hypotheses on determinants of government expenditure the purpose is to avoid omitted variables bias by testing the prominent theories in a comprehensive specification to identify persistent puzzles for the current set of theories and to explore those puzzles in greater depth by looking at the composition of government expenditure and the level of government at which it takes place as well as its magnitude using government financial statistics data from the imf covering over 100 countries from 1970 2000 i look at cross sectional and inter temporal variation in government expenditure and both individual categories of expenditure such as defense education health care and different levels of government central and local among other results i find a new explanation for wagner s law widespread evidence that preference heterogeneity leads to decentralization rather than outright decreases in expenditures that a great deal of the expenditure associated with increased trade openness is not in categories that explicitly insure for risk and evidence that both political access and income inequality affect the extent of social insurance

the economic effect of corruption in italy a regional panel analysis abstractthe economic effect of corruption in italy a regional panel analysis regional studies this paper provides a within country analysis of the impact of corruption on economic growth using a panel of italian regions from 1968 to 2011 through a robust measure of corruption this measure is averaged over five year periods to reduce short run fluctuations and probable delayed effects the results show a significant negative impact of corruption on long term growth in all specifications both on average and for each italian region as a consequence a zero level of corruption is growth maximizing this effect is non linear such that the negative impact of corruption on growth becomes less intense as corruption increases

capital taxation under political constraints this paper studies optimal dynamic tax policy under the threat of political reform a policy will be reformed ex post if a large enough coalition of citizens supports reform thus sustainable policies are those that will continue to attract enough political support in the future we find that optimal marginal capital taxes are either progressive or u shaped so that savings are subsidized for the poor and or the middle class but are taxed for the rich u shaped capital taxes always emerge when individuals political behavior is purely determined by economic motives

channels and policy debate in the globalization inequality poverty nexus the process of globalization has led to a much greater integration of the world economy the flows of trade capital labour technology and information across national borders have accelerated since the 1980s and created an environment conducive to faster economic growth and transmission of knowledge it is evident that the forces of globalization provide a strong potential for a major reduction in poverty in the developing world however for a number of reasons brought out in this chapter the positive impact of globalization on poverty alleviation worldwide has not been as substantial as one might have expected in this chapter we explore structural factors and policies within the world economy and national economies that impede the full transmission of the benefits of the various channels of globalization to poverty reduction

vested interests in a positive theory of stagnation and growth we study a positive theory of stagnation and growth aimed at understanding the large variations in growth outcomes across actual economies the theory points to the fundamental role played by vested interests in determining policies which are key to the growth process some agents seek to prevent the adoption of new technologies we develop a model of technology adoption and show how technological innovation may sow the seeds of its own destruction in particular we find that the equilibrium is characterized by a long cycle of stagnation and growth over this cycle incumbents are phased out of the economy will new innovation occur in formalizing our theory we make a methodological contribution by characterizing dynamic voting equilibria when voters must forecast the effects of different current policies on future prices and policy outcomes

factor shares and savings in endogenous growth in models of steady investment driven growth an individual s propensity to save depends on how much of his income is drawn from accumulated factors of production capital rather than from nonaccumulated factors when agents are heterogeneous in this respect growth oriented policies have distributional consequences and in the absence of lump sum redistribution their implementation faces political constraints if the median voter is capital poor relative to the economy s representative agent political interactions tend to slow down growth when policy acts on capital s income share and tend to accelerate it when investment subsidies are the policy instrument of choice copyright 1993 by american economic association

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

intergenerational mobility and the process of development this paper offers an explanation for some evidence that intergenerational earnings mobility is higher in more developed economies and that mobility is positively correlated with wage equality in the model mobility promotes economic growth via its effect on the accumulation and allocation of human capital growth influences mobility via its effect on incentives to acquire education and its effect on liquidity constraints upon such acquisition in the process of development mobility increases and the distribution of education becomes better correlated with ability redistributive policy has a negative effect on growth in developed economies and a positive effect in developing economies

explaining international and intertemporal variations in income inequality this paper explores the propositions that income inequality is relatively stable within countries and that it varies significantly among countries a new and expanded data set provides broad support for both propositions drawing on a political economy and capital market imperfection arguments to explain the intertemporal and international variation in inequality the empirical analysis shows that the predicted variables associated with the first argument a measure of civil liberties and the initial level of secondary schooling and the second argument a measure of financial depth and the initial distribution of land are indeed important determinants of inequality this paper explores two propositions regarding income inequality they are first income inequality is relatively stable within countries and second it varies significantly across countries to illustrate note that the gini coefficient in india remained almost constant for forty years 1951 92 with mean 32 6 and standard deviation 2 0 2 in contrast the variation in gini coefficients across countries is large 61 9 in honduras in 1968 compared with 17 8 in bulgaria in 1976 if substantiated these propositions have potentially significant implications for poverty the significance of the first is obvious barring any fundamental socio political change poverty reduction will depend crucially on the rate of economic growth given this the significance of the second is that in inegalitarian economies the poor will enjoy a smaller share of any national increment in income than in more egalitarian ones drawing on a new and expanded data set on inequality deininger and squire 1996a the first of the paper s three sections conducts standard statistical tests of the two propositions the sample comprises 573 observations on the most common measure of inequality the gini coefficient for 49 developed and developing countries covering the period 1947 94 the results broadly confirm our two propositions specifically analysis of variance anova shows that about 90 of the total variance in the gini coefficients

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

distributional effects of growth and public expenditures in africa estimates for tanzania and rwanda summary in this paper we explore the effects of fiscal policies and growth on measures of household welfare across the distribution of expenditures for two african countries rwanda and tanzania we explore the effect of government expenditures on expenditure growth in each quintile of the expenditure distribution and the effect of growth for each group we find that the benefits of growth are concentrated among the better off sectors of the population in these two countries perhaps to the detriment of the poorer sectors by looking at the effects within a country and across different groups of households and administrative entities we exploit variation in expenditures and growth across and within regions of each country to estimate the elasticities of expenditure with respect to fiscal expenditure and mean expenditure growth at different points of the expenditure distribution using household survey data and government expenditure data at the district level we find that overall mean expenditure growth benefits the top expenditure groups the welfare spillovers are mostly present for top 20 of the expenditure distribution with the middle of the distribution in tanzania responding slightly to these spillovers public social expenditures do not appear to affect inequality considerably but do tend to work toward decreasing inequality however mean expenditure growth is related to increases in inequality in the sense that the richest sectors of the population benefit the most from growth we find that the growth elasticity of expenditure is only above one for the top quintile in both countries in tanzania a 1 increase in average household expenditure is related to a 1 96 expenditure growth in the top quintile and 0 43 in the third quintile in rwanda a 1 increase in average household expenditure is related to a 1 93 increase in household expenditure in the top 20 of the distribution

growth learning and redistributive policies abstract this paper develops an endogenous growth model with redistributive taxation in which the growth rate of the economy affects the agents preferences over redistributive policies and therefore the equilibrium level of taxation the main mechanism through which the growth rate affects policy preferences is by changing the ability of the agents to learn their positions in the future distribution of incomes the main result of the paper is that during periods of growth the society opts for less taxation and less redistribution the model also predicts that growing economies are characterized by higher inequality in the distribution of income and by greater mobility of agents within income classes over time