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

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

should the kuznets effect be relied on to induce equalizing growth evidence from post 1950 development abstract the large body of cross sectional statistical research assessing 1 a kuznets inverted u for less developed countries ldcs 2 b a turning point is analyzed an alternative methodology is presented those countries which started in 1950 well below the turning point in rgdp and which reached an rgdp well above the turning point by 1980 are utilized as key cases income distribution data and assessments from individual country experts are combined with historical comparative microanalyses for each key case brazil costa rica greece japan malaysia south korea taiwan and turkey to construct patterns of income distribution during this crucial growth period it is demonstrated that the jury is still very much out on the kuznets inverted u for ldcs and the notion of a turning point should be rejected copyright 1997 elsevier science ltd

labor tying in a poor agrarian economy a theoretical and empirical analysis in this paper we show how tied labor contrary to its common characterization as a feudal relic and as a symptom of economic stagnation may actually be strengthened by capitalist agricultural development we construct a simple two period theoretical model of a two tiered labor market to show how the proportional importance of voluntary labor tying contracts may increase with yield increasing improvements and with a tightening of the labor market we then provide in support of these hypotheses some general historical as well as more detailed econometric evidence from a variety of cross sectional data in rural india

finance and income inequality in kazakhstan evidence since transition with policy suggestions abstractkazakhstan gained independence in 1990 and has undergone significant changes in economic social and trade conditions since then we analyse the effects of financial development on income inequality in kazakhstan incorporating economic growth foreign investment education and the role of democracy as the drivers we establish that income inequality in kazakhstan is impaired by financial development in summary we send three messages for policy purposes first strengthening financial sector is necessary to close the gap between haves and have nots second attracting fdi beyond the hydrocarbon sector is necessary to alleviate inequality finally adaptation of education system to the new social and economic environment would help in improving income distribution

diffusion and the international context of democratization democracy does not evolve sui generis the spatial clustering in democ racy and transitions suggests that international factors play a prominent role in forg ing democracies as well as influencing their durability we argue that democracy often comes about as a result of changes in the relative power of important actors and groups as well as their evaluations of particular institutions both of which are often influenced by forces outside the country in question the scope and extent of con nections with other democratic countries in a region can strengthen support for dem ocratic reform and help sustain institutions in transitional democracies results from a transition model demonstrate that international factors can exert a strong influence on the prospects for transitions to democracy and the spatial clustering in democ racy and transitions cannot adequately be explained by the hypothesized domestic social requisites of individual countries

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

inequality democracy and institutions a critical review of recent research this paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the effect of economic and political inequality on institutions the current understanding suggests that unequal societies develop exploitative and inefficient institutions empirical research which is scant and has mainly concentrated at cross national level supports to some extent the existence of an inverse relationship between inequality and institutions but more analysis is needed future empirical research should undertake country state and micro level analysis which are a necessary complement to aggregate level studies the effect of inequality could also take place indirectly through the influence of inequality on democratization

a duration analysis of democratic transitions and authoritarian backslides recent theories of political development have emphasized redistributive demands as the main drivers of democratic transitions and consolidation the authors employ cox duration models to evaluate a number of economic institutionalist and sociological theories of regime transition using global data from 1970 to 1999 this study suggests that demands for redistribution are insufficient explanators of political transitions the authors find that transitions to democracy depend primarily on a high level of oppositionist social mobilization and secondarily favorable patterns of economic distribution on the other hand a high level of socioeconomic development is by far the best guarantor of democratic resiliency whereas mass political conflict endangers consolidation once democracy has been introduced the study also reveals that institutionalist factors are less influential than socioeconomic characteristics in explaining regime transitions this study highlights the contribution of social movement the

india s informal trade with bangladesh a qualitative assessment the large and vibrant informal trade between india and bangladesh continues to thrive despite unilateral regional multilateral trade liberalisation in these two countries this calls for an in depth analysis of india s informal trade with bangladesh using insights from the new institutional economics informal and formal institutions engaged in cross border trade are contrasted to examine whether informal trading arrangements provide better institutional solutions the analysis carried out on the basis of an extensive survey conducted in india and bangladesh reveals that informal traders in india and bangladesh have developed efficient mechanisms for contract enforcement information flows risk sharing and risk mitigation further informal traders prefer to trade through the informal channel because the transaction costs of trading in the informal channel are significantly lower than the formal channel implying that informal trade takes place due to the inefficient institutional set up in the formal channel the principal policy implication from the study is that unless the transacting environment of formal traders improves informal trade will continue to coexist with formal trade even if free trade is established in the saarc region

collective labor rights and income inequality this article examines the relationship between income inequality and collective labor rights conceptualized as workers legal and practical ability to engage in collective activity although worker organization is central to explaining income inequality in industrialized democracies worldwide comparative studies have neglected the role of class based actors i argue that the repression of labor rights reduces the capacity of worker organizations to effectively challenge income inequality through market and political processes in capitalist societies labor rights however are unlikely to have uniform effects across regions this study uses unbalanced panel data for 100 developed and less developed countries from 1985 through 2002 random and fixed effects models find that strong labor rights are tightly linked to lower inequality across a large range of countries including in the global south interactions between regions and labor rights suggest that the broader context in which class based actors a

democracy economic development and income inequality most cross national tests of inverse association between democracy and inequality have operationalized the concept of democracy by measuring its level at a single point in time more compelling theoretical arguments can be made for causal relationships that operate over time between 1 a country s years of democratic experience and income inequality and 2 income inequality and the stability of democracy continuous and qualitative measures of years of democratic experience are estimated to have a significant negative impact on income inequality independent of economic development and other control variables for a sample of 55 countries a very strong inverse correlation is also observed between income inequality and regime stability for a sample of 33 democracies this association holds independent of economic development which is found to have no direct effect on democratic stability after controlling for income inequality

democracy and economic growth a historical perspective recent studies appear to show that democracy has no robust association with economic growth yet all such work assumes that the causal effect of democracy can be measured by a country s regime status in a particular year t which is correlated with its growth performance in a subsequent period t 1 the authors argue that democracy must be understood as a stock rather than a level measure that is a country s growth performance is affected by the number of years it has been democratic in addition to the degree of democracy experienced during that period in this fashion democracy is reconceptualized as a historical rather than a contemporary variable with the assumption that long run historical patterns may help scholars to understand present trends the authors speculate that these secular historical infiuences operate through four causal pathways each of which may be understood as a type of capital physical capital human capital social capital and political capital this argument is tested in a cross country analysis and is shown to be robust in a wide variety of specifications and formats

making it underground comparative material on the informal sector in western market economies this paper examines the informal economy and its relationship to commonly held theories of industrial development although these theories stem from very different intellectual traditions their general assumption has been that widespread informal economic activities are primarily a feature of third world economies in which they function as a refuge from destitution such activities are presumably destined to desappear with the advance of modern industry led growth evidence is presented that indicates that these assumptions including the identification of informality with conditions in the less developed countries are wrong alternative interpretations of the resilience of these activities in third world countries despite rapid industrialization and their continuity and apparent revival in the advanced economies and discussed

foreign direct investment and income inequality further evidence abstract this paper examines the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and income inequality special attention has been paid to data comparability and model specification by comparing models with and without geographical dummies this study shows that the statistically significant correlation between fdi and income inequality widely obtained in earlier studies might capture more of the geographical difference in inequality than the deleterious influence of fdi and to the extent that fdi does give rise to more unequal income distribution in the host less developed countries ldcs only east southeast asia ldcs appear to have been harmed by the inflow of fdi during the 1970s it should be noted however that the second result refers only to the marginal impact not the total impact apart from fdi our empirical evidence suggests that the level of economic development the direct role of government and to a smaller degree the significance of the agriculture sector in an ldc are crucial determinants of income inequality

interlocking transactions obstacles precursors or instruments of agrarian capitalism abstract rural labor arrangements often change rapidly and in ways that prevailing theories cannot explain explicit understanding of the exercise of power in rural society sheds considerable light on how and why rural labor arrangements change in the course of economic development this paper shows how different labor tying arrangements embody exclusionary mechanisms that can serve as instruments of both labor management and social control macro political and economic conditions shape the ways in which these mechanisms operate and are in turn influenced by them viewing labor arrangements in this way helps resolve problems confronted by the prevailing theories and allows for a broader understanding of dynamic processes

density social networks and job search methods theory and application to egypt we first develop a theoretical model in which individuals are embedded within a network of social relationships we show that conditional on being employed the probability to find a job through social networks relative to other search methods increases and is concave with the size of the network the effects are stronger for the uneducated there is however a critical size of the network above which this probability decreases we then test empirically these theoretical findings for egypt using the 1998 labor market survey the empirical evidence supports the predictions of our theoretical model

the new institutional economics and its applicability to development abstract the several remarkable developments in the social sciences which have come to be known as the new institutional economics nie have not yet been fully exploited for analyzing the determinants and effects of institutional change in the context of development this paper identifies two important components of the nie and illustrates both a potential complementarities between them and b their applicability to various problems and policies in the long term development of developing countries

politics and perceived country creditworthiness in international banking this paper marks a departure from most previous studies of country creditworthiness in international banking because it incorporates systematically generated quantitative indicators of political instability in the analysis the authors empirically test for the effects of political instability on perceived country creditworthiness using data on thirty heavily indebted developing countries for the period 1967 86 in addition to economic factors they examine the effects of three types of political instability regime change political legitimacy and armed conflict the authors also distinguish between proximate instability and chronic instability they find significant effects of proximate instability particularly in governmental regime on indicators of countries perceived creditworthiness copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

is school the best route to skills returns to vocational school and vocational skills in egypt this paper tests the assumption that formal education is the best route to job skills the returns to formal vocational secondary schooling are compared to the returns to acquiring skills outside the education system such as undertaking an apprenticeship for male wage workers in egypt a unique longitudinal dataset with information on schooling and skills allows for causal inference about returns by comparing siblings for recent cohorts the estimated returns to formal vocational secondary education are the same as attaining no formal education however the returns to skills obtained outside of formal education are substantial

inequality growth and democracy the analysis of the relationship between inequality and economic growth in distinct politi coeconomic environments has been one of the central preoccupations of the extensive theoretical and empirical work on growth in the last decade the authors argue that the empirical evidence available to date strongly indicates the relevance of this work for understanding the elusive causal connection between economic development and democracy the state of the literature suggests considerable sophistication in conceptualizing the direct economic effects of inequality and contains critical insights into politically unconstrained policy making aimed at the alleviation of their negative economic impact however the political feasibility of the recommended policy measures and the politically mediated effects of inequality and redistributive policy on growth and on the strength and stability of democratic regimes are understood less well the authors discuss the critical factors influencing these effects and sketch several approaches to creating a comprehensive politicoeconomic account of the interaction between inequality redistributive policy making and political regimes

inequality and democracy why inequality harms consolidation but does not affect democratization under what conditions do democracies emerge and consolidate recent theories suggest that inequality is among the leading determinants of both democratization and consolidation by contrast this article argues that inequality harms consolidation but has no net effect on democratization the author shows that the existing theories that link inequality to democratization suffer from serious limitations 1 they are useful only for understanding transitions from below and thus do not apply to many other transitions that is those from above 2 even for democratization from below their predictions are unlikely to hold since inequality actually has two opposite effects and 3 they ignore collective action problems which reduces their explanatory power however these objections do not affect the relationship between inequality and consolidation in particular while inequality has two opposite effects on the probability of transition to democracy it unambiguously increases the probability of transition away from democracy this article conducts the most comprehensive empirical test to date of the relationship between inequality and democracy it finds no support for the main democratization theories contrary to what they predict estimation suggests neither a monotonic negative nor an inverted u shaped relationship yet inequality increases the probability of backsliding from democracy to dictatorship

innovation processes in large technical systems market liberalization as a driver for radical change abstract electricity supply is a large technical system which exhibits strong path dependencies and high barriers for radical innovations recent market liberalization however has initiated a fundamental restructuring the paper analyzes how liberalization has altered innovation processes in the field of electricity supply we examine three radical innovations under monopoly conditions and contrast the findings with the results from a survey on the innovation behavior of electric utilities in liberalized markets we argue that the selection environment for innovations has changed in various respects in our sample new options open to innovation activities have emerged at the level of the firm and utility strategies turn out to be more heterogeneous this may be interpreted as an increase in the variety of search processes which may lead to a mid term decrease of path dependencies

economic determinants of democracy the relationship between the level of economic development and the level of democracy found in most quantitative cross national research implies that the largest gains in democracy are experienced by countries at intermediate levels of development during the 1960s and 1970s however middle income countries were more likely to register declines in democracy than increases i explain this anomaly with the hypothesis that income inequality affects democracy and this effect often counteracts the positive influence of economic development because intermediate levels of economic development are associated with the highest levels of income inequality the independent negative effect of income inequality on change in level of democracy explains the declines in democracy in middle income countries cross national data from a sample of 58 countries support the hypothesis of a negative effect of income inequality on change in level of democracy from 1965 to 1980 this effect is robust when noneconomic determinants of democracy are taken into account and when sample size is increased

politics and inequality in latin america and the caribbean this article presents the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in latin america and the caribbean the authors build on models consisting of sociological and economic variables adding the strength of the democratic tradition long term legislative partisan political power distribution and social spending to explain variation in inequality they analyze an unbalanced pooled time series data set for income distribution in 18 latin american and caribbean countries from 1970 to 2000 they show that the political variables add explanatory power a strong record of democracy and a left leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes thus they replicate some and modify other well established findings from studies of organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries in the very different context of latin america and the caribbean

assessing the relationship between economic and ecological performance distinguishing system levels and the role of innovation in this article we critically discuss the different perspectives that are currently in use for assessing the relationship between ecological and economic performance based on a review of the literature we propose that research up till now has made use of four distinct system boundaries the firm markets production and consumption systems and economic systems making these boundaries explicit is helpful in interpreting the mixed results that have been obtained we describe the consequences of the choice for each of these system boundaries and look at implications for innovation we also argue that the production and consumption system boundary offers potential for further advances in the field and deserves more attention in future research

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

formal and informal institutions in the labor market with applications to the construction sector in egypt abstract urban labor markets that are characterized by the absence or ineffectiveness of regulation by legal and bureaucratic institutions can nonetheless be subject to powerful institutional forces based on customary norms group cohesion kinship and social networks using insights derived from the new institutional economics this argument is illustrated with three examples from the construction labor market in egypt where formal and informal institutions performing similar functions are contrasted in each case the informal institution is found to be significantly more important in shaping labor market relations

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

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

ecological modernisation new perspectives abstract ecological modernisation understood as systematic eco innovation and its diffusion has by far the largest potential to achieve environmental improvements in general the market logic of modernisation and competition for innovation combined with the market potential of global environmental needs serve as important driving forces behind ecological modernisation in recent times however additional factors like rising energy prices or fears from climate change have favoured the rise of this innovation based approach to environmental policy the article deals with two special driving forces first there is growing evidence for the importance of smart environmental regulation secondly the increasingly complex actor constellation of global environmental governance leads to mounting business risks for polluters and thereby exerts pressure for eco innovation despite these favourable framework conditions the strategy of ecological modernisation nonetheless faces a number of inherent limitations these include the unavailability of marketable technological solutions for relevant environmental problems like the loss of species the rebound effect neutralising the incremental environmental improvements through economic growth the dilemma of the n curve as well as resistance by modernisation losers against this background structural solutions seem indispensable here eco innovations should be supported by transition management or ecological structural policy

kinship ties social networks and segmented labor markets evidence from the construction sector in egypt abstract this paper tests for rationing of entry into craft occupations in the construction labor market in egypt and investigates whether entry is rationed according to regional origin and access to kinship and other social networks i use a modified version of roy s model of occupational choice which allows for the existence of costs of entry into craft occupations data from a 1988 survey of construction workers are used to estimate the model and test for rationing the results confirm the existence of rationing according to a worker s regional background but are inconclusive with respect to kinship ties and social networks

income inequality development and dependence a reconsideration we reconsider the role of foreign investment in income inequality in light of recent critiques that question the results of quantitative cross national research on foreign capital penetration we analyze an unbalanced cross national data set in which countries contribute different numbers of observations with a maximum of 88 countries and 488 observations dated from 1967 to 1994 random effects regression models that control for unmeasured country heterogeneity are used to investigate effects of foreign capital penetration on inequality measured as the gini coefficient against the background of an internal developmental model of inequality we adapt firebaugh s 1992 1996 critique of the literature on the effect of foreign investment on economic growth to the study of income inequality and find that the stock of foreign direct investment has an effect on inequality that is independent of the mechanisms identified by firebaugh we explore tsai s 1995 claim that the effect of foreign capital penetration is spurious and find that foreign stock has a significant positive effect on inequality net of region specific differences an alternative interpretation of the findings of the foreign investment inequality literature is discussed in light of the discovery of an inverted u shaped relationship between income inequality and foreign investment stock per capita we conclude that thinking on the relationship between income inequality and investment dependence should be revised in light of an investment development path relating the inflow and outflow of foreign capital to economic development

does liberte egalite a survey of the empirical links between democracy and inequality with some evidence on the transition economies the effect of the distribution of political rights on income inequality has been studied both theoretically and empirically the authors review the existing literature and in particular the available empirical evidence the literature suggests that formal exclusion from the political process through restrictions on the voting franchise appears to have caused a high degree of economic inequality and democratization in the form of franchise expansion has typically led to an expansion in redistribution at least in the small sample of episodes studied in a less pronounced way albeit more emphatically compared with the ambiguous results of earlier research recent evidence indicates an inverse relationship between other measures of democracy based on civil liberties and political rights and inequality the transition experience of eastern european countries however seems to some extent go against these conclusions this opens possible new vistas for research namely the need to incorporate the length of democratic experience and the role played by ideology and social values

democracy stability and dichotomies an early debate in the empirical study of political democracy concerned the measurement of democracy initial work employed dichotomous indicators and incorporated stability into political democracy measures evidence accumulated showing that this approach could adversely affect analyses particularly in the study of income inequality despite this some recent studies have renewed the flawed practices we draw upon recent work to highlight the confusion that can result when democracy and stability are confounded and the problems with dichotomous indicators we propose that stability is analytically distinct from political democracy and should be treated as such empirically and we suggest ways to estimate incremental effects of political democracy we further argue that political democracy is continuous and that measures of it should reflect this it is important that the measurement history of this construct not repeat itself

economics of technological change and the natural environment how effective are innovations as a remedy for resource scarcity abstract the paper aims to substantiate the importance of endogenous innovations when evaluating the compatibility of natural resource use and economic development it explains that technological change has the potential to compensate for natural resource scarcity diminishing returns to capital poor input substitution and material balance restrictions but is limited by various restrictions like fading returns to innovative investments and rising research costs it also shows how innovative activities are fostered by accurate price signals and research favouring sectoral change the simultaneous effects of increasing technical knowledge decreasing resource inputs and increasing world population largely determine the chances of long run sustainable development consequently future research has to be directed at a more thorough understanding of the mechanisms driving innovations in the presence of natural resource scarcity

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

inequality and political violence revisited in their 1987 article in this review muller and seligson used logged ordinary least squares lols to estimate the effect of income inequality on cross national levels of deaths by political violence t y wang challenges the robustness of the main conclusion and argues for the application of a maximum likelihood approach the exponential poisson regression epr model rather than lols he concludes that the widely used lols approach yields misleading conclusions when applied to event count data dixon muller and seligson replicate previous work using both lols and epr approaches and conclude that in most but not all respects the two approaches yield similar results supporting the effect of inequality when the specifications are identical they also argue in response to concerns expressed by brockett 1992 that the inequality results are robust when account is taken systematically of the best information on underreporting of deaths

sharecropping and the interlinking of agrarian markets one of the often noted features of less developed agrarian economies is the existence of interlinkages among the land labor credit and product markets the landlord is often the supplier of credit he frequently purchases and markets the output of the tenant farmers and often sells raw materials and even consumption goods to his tenant farmers how can this phenomenon be explained what are the welfare consequences of attempts to restrict these practices which often seem to constitute restraints on free trade these are the questions to which this paper is addressed a general set of arguments applicable to both competitive and noncompetitive environments are presented to situations where all the terms of the contract are determined in an optimal way as well as to situations where many of the terms are specified institutionally section i examines interlinked credit and tenancy contracts section ii examines interlinked marketing and tenancy contracts section iii points out the possible interlinking between labor contracts and consumption goods markets and section iv presents the different equilibrium frameworks discussed in the paper such as monopoly monopsony competition and equilibria with surplus labor

income inequality and democratization revisited comment on muller m uller s 1995 conclusion that income inequality has a major impact on rates of democratization continues a line of thought from muller 1988 and muller and seligson 1994 and is at odds with our earlier empirical results bollen and jackman 1985a the major difference between muller 1988 and muller 1995 is that he is now more concerned with accounting for changes in democracy whereas in the earlier paper he sought to explain years of stable democracy to measure change in political democracy muller 1995 uses 1965 and 1980 measures of democracy developed by bollen 1980 1993 in lieu of his own earlier years of stable democracy measure muller s analysis is not compelling on two counts first he fails to provide a convincing rationale for the hypothesized link between inequality and rates of democratization second using his data we find that his results are not robust but instead are sensitive to plausible respecifications of the model

income inequality democracy and public sector size this study synthesizes and tests explanations of how public sector size and democracy affect income inequality the results based on unbalanced panel data for 64 developing and developed countries

the new institutional economics and development theory a brief critical assessment abstract in this paper we discuss strengths and weaknesses of transaction cost and imperfect information approaches to the economic theory of institutions particularly with reference to problems relevant to economic development

income distribution and poverty an interregional comparison abstract this paper compares experiences in economic growth income distribution and poverty in different regions of the world it examines the causes of interregional disparities in growth and distribution assessing the nature of the link between growth and distribution among other results it concludes that low inequality is most likely to be consistent with sustainable growth and that positive growth is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for low inequality or poverty incidence in the context of the new global economy alleviation of inequality and poverty calls for an articulate strategy targeting on the marginalized population at large