quality and safety standards in the food industry developments and challenges consumer concerns related to food safety scandals and globalization of food production have resulted in a global and interconnected system for the production and distribution of food in the last decade many public and private standards on food safety and quality have been developed as a result of these developments currently there is proliferation of standards worldwide one effect is that in particular companies from developing countries and emerging economies have problems to comply with these standards another important effect is increasing marginal costs of certification and accreditation which also puts pressure on company profits in industrialized countries the combined impacts of these effects ask for strategies to revalue the cost effectiveness of the certification and accreditation system

population increase economic growth educational inequality and income distribution some recent evidence abstract using a recent inter country sample impacts of population increase short run growth rate and educational level and inequality on income distribution are assessed as in almost all other studies high population increase is observed to be a disequalizer however unlike the position indicated in several earlier studies rapid short run economic growth seems to reduce income inequality while higher mean schooling level appears to be a mild equalizer contrary to the results reported by earlier researchers no adverse effect of educational inequality on income distribution is found

the commons as a natural barrier to entry why there are so few fish farms a competitive industry which overuses a common access resource may create a barrier to entry similar to spence s example of a cartel that uses excess capacity to prevent entry in most industries when a new firm enters existing firms find that their demand curves have fallen so they reduce their output to accommodate the new entrant in spence s model the cartel disintegrates upon entry so that the output of existing firms increases which may make entry unprofitable in an open access fishery the supply curve bends backward thus a fall in price created by the entry of a fish farm increases rather than decreases supply in the backwardbending portion of the supply curve an important implication of this theory is that fish farms are more likely to be unprofitable the more heavily overharvested is a species in a common property competitive market this natural barrier to entry may explain why true mariculture is barely in its infancy bardach ryther and mclarney

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

environmental policy and international trade when governments and producers act strategically some environmentalists express concern that trade liberalization may damage the environment by giving governments incentives to relax environmental policies to give domestic producers a competitive advantage support for such concern may be given by models of imperfectly competitive trade where there may be rent shifting incentives for governments to relax environmental policies but there are also incentives for producers to act strategically e g through their investment in rd ii allowing governments to act strategically increases the incentive for producers to act strategically iii welfare is lower when both parties act strategically and iv strategic behavior by producers and governments is greater when governments use emission taxes than when they use emission standards

changing income inequalities within and between nations new evidence fresh data sources on cross national income are examined to document recent changes in the composition of world income inequality within and between nations new evidence shows that during the 1980s and 1990s the composition of world income inequality experienced a fundamental change characterized by the diminishing significance of between nation income differences and the growing prominence of within nation inequalities two competing trends account for this change 1 steady growth in the average level of income inequality within nations and 2 a decline in income inequality between nations these recent trends signify a reversal in one of the major legacies of the industrial revolution the internationalization of world income inequality across national borders the findings raise important questions for future studies of cross national inequality and development

economic development and income inequality further evidence on the u curve hypothesis abstract internationally comparable data on inequality and income are utilized to reassess the empirical status of kusnets u curve hypothesis the hypothesis seems well supported when both developed countries dcs and less developed countries lcds are included in the sample however the position changes rather dramatically if the sample is restricted to lcds and very small support for the hypothesis is then observed also a simple comparison indicates that some of the support reported in earlier studies may have been due to the use of conventional gross domestic product per capita in general results based on gini coefficient seem less favorable to the hypothesis than those derived from household income shares

the nature of economic development abstract economic development has been associated with a sustained increase in real per capita gdp over fairly long periods of time such growth rates have been associated with the phenomenon of structural transformation both among the european leaders and the late comers among the developing countries equally compelling though less pervasive has been an essentially harmonious relationship between the growth of per capita gdp macroeconomic stability and a better distribution of income moreover the incidence of poverty has sharply decreased while the leading indicators of human development have recorded a significant improvement wherever per capita income has increased rapidly this property of economic development christened as orderly transformation in this paper is one of the most outstanding stylized facts of economic development and it has been most evident among countries where growth of per capita income has been in excess of 3 per annum

development and inequality revisited three decades after the seminal article of kuznets 1955 and one decade after the empirical investigation of ahluwalia 1976b the relationship between income inequality and economic developement is still controversial this paper examines the above relationship within a time series cross section framework in a sample of countries which are representative of the non centrally planned economies of the world we use gdp per capita in real un international comparison project dollors as an indicator of a country s level of economic development the results lend support to the kuznets inverse u hypothesis although other factors relfecting the institutional setting of a country are found to affect income inequality significantly during the development process as well similar results are obtained if we exclude developed countries from the sample

the economics of wildlife farming and endangered species conservation abstract there is growing concern that the traditional protectionist approach to conservation is expensive and insufficient to deliver the desired environmental outcomes supply side policies to conserve endangered species have drawn support by generating supplies from captive bred animals wildlife commodity prices are expected to fall thereby lowering the incentive to poach species in the wild supply side policies however often neglect the institutional framework within which the wildlife trade takes place and ignore the potential strategic responses of economic agents adopting a model that captures imperfect competition between traders and farmers we analyze the effect of supply side policies and conclude that under some circumstances these policies may contribute to further devastation of wild stocks we derive conditions under which captive breeding contributes to conservation and discuss implications for policy makers

institutions and environmental governance a reconceptualization abstract this article presents the conceptual revisions needed to extend the new institutional approach to environmental governance from its current local and international domains of application to all governance solutions including national environmental and natural resource use policies and multi level governance solutions that are increasingly used to address global environmental change the article suggests that environmental governance is best understood as the establishment reaffirmation or change of institutions to resolve conflicts over environmental resources it also explains why the choice of these institutions is a matter of social justice rather than of efficiency the article suggests a way to understand formal and state centered governance solutions as forms of collective ownership not unlike common property the article demonstrates how institutional analysis can gain resolution by looking at the functional and structural tiers organization of governance functions and formulation of key institutional rules as key aspects of the design of governance institutions

trends in the development of ecological economics from the late 1980s to the early 2000s abstract as the contributions to ecological economics are very diverse recent years have seen some discussion on both how to delimit the field and in which direction it should develop the intention with this paper is to contribute to the discussion by outlining important trends in the development of the field from the late 1980s to the early 2000s the study is inspired by other studies in the sociology and history of science in particular by the theoretical framework regarding scientific fields as reputational organizations which draws attention to both cognitive and social aspects of the formation of a field the basis for the paper is a combination of literature studies interviews with key researchers in the field and participant observations the paper outlines the characteristic cognitive features of ecological economics at the time of the birth of the field it is then described how the development in ecological economics was influenced by broader social factors during the following years and how the field was shaped by the inflow and outflow of different groups of researchers the emergence of different research programmes is outlined as is the organizational development finally the characteristics of ecological economics are summarized and the future prospects are briefly assessed

the ivory trade ban is it effective abstract this paper examines the effectiveness of the ivory trade ban when producer and consumer states have different incentives to comply with such a ban the paper distinguishes between two types of producer states those with stable elephant population and those with declining elephant population we compare the independent enforcement level of each of these producer states and a consumer state and show the suboptimality of these levels compared to optimal enforcement level that would result from a cooperative effort the costliness and imperfectness of enforcing constraints on the private taking of elephants creates intergovernmental externalities thus in the absence of binding international law regulation would have to be supplemented with incentives

natural resource booms and inequality theory and evidence we develop a theory in the context of a two sector growth model in which learning by doing drives growth to explain the time path of income inequality following natural resource booms in resource rich countries under the condition of a relatively unskilled labor intensive non traded sector inequality falls immediately after a boom and then increases steadily over time until the initial impact of the boom disappears using data for 90 countries between 1965 and 1999 we find evidence in support of the theory especially for oil and mineral booms we also find that uncertainty about future commodity prices increases long run inequality

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

the measurement of inequality and poverty a policy maker s guide to the literature abstract mathematical measures of poverty and inequality embody values that reflect the historical political social intellectual and ethical forces prevalent at the time of their formulation so that policy makers may select measures of poverty and inequality that are consistent with their values it is important to make explicit the value judgements implicit in the measures models designed to measure poverty and inequality fall into four categories absolute poverty measures absolute income measures relative poverty measures and relative inequality measures this article examines the principal models within each category and discusses the assumptions limitations and values implicit in the models

is there redemption for conventions this article explores the concept of convention in the social sciences it presents the two major neo humean philosophical approaches to convention and challenges their intuitive appeal and research implications the weaknesses of these approaches are examined and a new direction is suggested for the study of convention the paper goes on to develop a framework for the analysis of conventions using the notion of the exemplar introduced by thomas kuhn an illustration of this alternative approach is provided using the example of the wage relation copyright 2005 oxford university press

the structure of income inequality in puerto rico abstract the kuznets hypothesis predicts that the level of income inequality will rise then fall during the course of economic development however empirical studies have found that for many countries inequality levels off after a certain stage of development and remains at this level for a long period of time in this paper one possible reason for the formation of such an inequality plateau is suggested puerto rico is used for our case study employing an augmented input output model we find that the 1963 puerto rican economy had reached such an inequality plateau with a very narrow range of inequality levels permitted by its economic structure we then investigate the relation between the inequality band and the degree of sectoral interdependence we find that under certain assumptions one can show a direct correspondence between the two with the equality range narrowing as the linkages increase once an economic system has reached a certain degree of sophistication in its linkage structure its inequality level may become immobile the implication of this is that after a point the natural course of development will not result in further reduction in inequality at this stage the government might have to intervene directly in income determination to reduce inequality

the impact of education expansion on wage inequality abstarctthe findings on education expansion and income inequality have important implications for policymakers to implement effective policies to reduce income inequality this study attempts to explain how education expansion affects income inequality by education distribution and the rate of return to education we decompose the effect of education expansion on wage gaps into price effect and structure effect we compare the income inequality from 2002 to 2013 using the chinese household income project chip 2002 and chip2013 survey data and employ ffl decomposition method our findings suggest that income inequality increased in 2013 and that income inequality among the high income groups increased even more significantly the structure effect of education expansion on income inequality is negative when average education increases one year the income gap between 80th and 20th will decrease 1 2 in other words education expansion decreases income inequality by allowing a wide range of individuals t

the effect of changes in the population on several measures of income distribution an economic model is used to explore the relationship between population growth and 2 of the most commonly used income distribution statistics the share of the rich and the poor in total income and the rate of growth of real income of the rich and the poor brazilian statistics applied to the model illustrate the difficulty of interpreting the common inequality measures under conditions of rapid population growth neither income shares nor growth rates can tell much about the degree of progressivity in the growth strategy of a particular country without adjustment absolute income for the base period poor or base period teenagers was greater than reported for either the poor or teenagers however the rise in inequality was also greater for the base period population growth in brazil was seen to be even more regressive than previously thought significant upward mobility was however still possible

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

an assessment of alternative methods of estimating the effect of the ivory trade ban on poaching effort the ban on international trade in ivory introduced by the international community in 1989 was intended to protect the declining stock of african elephant loxodonta africana by providing a barrier between the range state and the principal consuming nations if there is a residual trade then the efficiency of the ban is determined by the decline in the price paid to poachers and the responsiveness of poaching effort to changing prices this paper concentrates on the latter issue and provides a review of a number of alternative approaches to modelling poaching effort with extensions it is found that even low residual prices would induce a level of effort that would significantly depress elephant numbers

issues of paradigm ideology and democracy in sustainability assessment does the challenge of sustainable development sd have implications for our approches to decision making and evaluation do we need specific sustainability assessment models sams and if so what

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

an open access fishery with rational expectations explain the evolution of the fish stock and the boat fleet as well as determine their equilibrium levels 2 while the changes in the fish stock are described by a biological rule entry and exit from the fishing industry are determined by how expectations are formed we examine a general model in which entry and exit are proportional to the present value of expected profits and compare two special cases of adaptive myopic expectations and rational expectations although both expectations mechanisms lead to the same equilibrium values they lead to different adjustment paths where expectations solely depend on current values myopic expectations it is well known that boats enter the fishery only when the fish stock is greater than its steady state stock 3 with rational expectations however boats may enter when the fish stock is much lower than its steady state value provided the boat fleet is sufficiently small this difference in adjustment is observable and in principle leads to an obvious test on how agents form expectations section 2 develops a general dynamic model for studying fisheries in section 3 we show that the model standardly used in the literature is equivalent to a myopic adaptive expectations model a rational expectations model is analyzed in section 4 the standard and rational expectations models are compared in section 5 section 6 illustrates this comparison using a simulation based on a schaefer model of the pacific halibut fishery section 7 presents the conclusions

examining the conventions of voluntary environmental approaches in french agriculture in this paper we consider how growing awareness of environmental problems in agriculture has triggered certain interactions between producers and consumers since both public and private actors resort to collective action to address these problems this article will seek to examine the different forms of economic coordination and their dynamics using an adaptation of salais and storper s worlds of production framework 1992 1997 considering that each world of production is a world of conventions we focus on environmental conventions this work is based on an empirical study of agricultural voluntary environmental approaches as these provide a means of ensuring coordination between producers and consumers and enable products to be differentiated according to their environmental quality copyright oxford university press

the complex interactions of markets for endangered species products economic models of trade in endangered species products often do not incorporate four focal arguments in the policy debate over trade bans 1 law abiding consumers may operate in another market separate from illegal consumers that trade would bring online 2 legal trade reduces stigma which affects demand of law abiding consumers 3 laundering may bring illegal goods to legal markets when trade is allowed 4 legal sales may affect illegal supply costs this paper analyzes systematically which aspects of these complicated markets separately or in combination are important for determining whether limited legalized trade in otherwise illegal goods can be helpful for achieving policy goals like reducing poaching

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

the four worlds of contemporary industry the authors propose to endogenize industrial diversity by beginning with the product defined in terms of its qualities for the user specialized standardized dedicated generic for each type of product there is a coherent possible combination of product dualities production technologies and markets these coherent combinations can only come about when coherent mutual expectations conventions are formed between actors in the production system in terms of resource qualities quantities and their economic equivalents the theoretical problem of diversity is redefined as one of collective action the coherence of conventions of groups of actors helps explain what they do in market economies and how they do it copyright 1992 by oxford university press

self regulation taxation and public voluntary environmental agreements an increasingly popular instrument for solving environmental problems is the public voluntary agreement va in which government offers technical assistance and positive publicity to firms that reach certain environmental goals prior papers treat such agreements as a superior low cost instrument that can be used to preempt a threat of traditional inefficient regulation we present a more general model in which public vas may instead be weak tools used when political opposition makes environmental taxes infeasible we explore the conditions under which taxes public vas and unilateral industry actions are to be expected and the welfare implications of the various instruments notably we also show that welfare may be reduced by the introduction of public vas 2002 elsevier b v all rights reserved

growth and equity with endogenous human capital taiwan s economic miracle revisited this paper presents an endogenous growth model for a small open economy with a significant trade surplus and active government development strategies in order to reexamine the major determinants of economic growth and income distribution this analysis provides a better interpretation for the intertwined relationship between growth and equity an important economic issue that has not been fully addressed by the well known models 5 9 20 in traditional growth studies economists have emphasized the role of two major factor inputs physical capital and labor output growth is considered to depend merely on exogenous shifts in population and technology recently lucas points out that this conventional approach to studying economic growth may leave more than half of output growth unexplained 12 in order to improve the understanding of the underlying endogenous forces promoting economic development new growth theorists have proposed several alternatives to the conventional models such as the endogenous fertility choice 4 the endogenous technological evolution 16 and the endogenous human capital accumulation or learning process 12 13 to name but a few these contributions have generated additional interests in and rich implications for empirical studies of public policy 6 and cross country comparisons 3 15 lucas s endogenous human capital formation model is particularly suitable for studying the

prospects for a heterodox economics of the environment and sustainability this paper introduces a special issue on heterodox economics of the environment and sustainability at present humanity faces several challenges such as resource scarcity biodiversity loss and climate change and yet we would argue contributions from traditional heterodox schools of thought such as post keynesianism marxism and to a lesser extent institutionalism have had relatively little to say about them instead the economic analysis of environmental issues has been dominated by approaches inspired by neoclassical economics and latterly by ecological economics the special issue is part of an effort to stimulate more heterodox work on the environment and to explore connections between existing groups of scholars particularly between ecological and heterodox economists

issues and concerns in developing regulated markets for endangered species products the case of rhinoceros horns a proposal for addressing rhinoceros poaching is to legalise the trade in rhino horn and adopt a regulated market approach rma overturning the current trade ban this orthodox economic prescription aims to reduce incentives to poach endangered wildlife by driving down the market price of their products via auctioned stockpile releases biologists are clear however that securing a stockpile for some species needs biological success in captive breeding programmes cbps which varies markedly across species and habitats rhinoceros herds in a cbp would need spatially extensive terrain and costly permanent security measures and this only appears feasible for the less aggressive white rhino we argue that market price would actually need to be sustained at a high level to cover protection costs over the longer reproduction cycles in cbps and that without extensive monitoring and the correct institutional structures being in place legalising trade may encourage rather than prevent poaching supplementary policy measures that differentiate among consumer groups would also likely prove necessary

declining inequality in schooling in brazil and its effects on inequality in earnings abstract household survey data demonstrate that brazilian males born between 1925 and 1963 experienced steady increases in mean schooling and significant declines in schooling inequality the variance in years of schooling increased for cohorts born up until 1950 with steady declines for more recent cohorts decomposition of a standard human capital earnings equation indicates that trends in schooling tended to reduce earnings inequality from 1976 to 1985 due to reductions in both the variance of schooling and in returns to schooling these improvements were more than offset however by increases in other sources of inequality although the net increase in earnings inequality from 1976 to 1985 is disturbing the reduction in schooling inequality represents a fundamental improvement in the determinants of earnings inequality in brazil that will have beneficial effects for decades

income distribution and development some stylized facts in recent years the relationship between income distribution and the process of development has come under increasing scrutiny much of the debate has focused on the hypothesis originally advanced by simon kuznets that the secular behavior of inequality follows an inverted u shaped pattern with inequality first increasing and then decreasing with development this hypothesis has become so much a part of the conventional wisdom on this subject that it has generated considerable skepticism about the welfare implications of the development process indeed on some interpretations developing countries face the grim prospect not just of increasing relative inequality but also of declining absolute incomes for the lower income groups

optimal institutional arrangements for transboundary pollutants in a second best world evidence from a differential game with asymmetric players abstract this paper uses a dynamic model with asymmetric players to explore the question in a second best world should environmental regulations for transboundary pollutants be carried out locally or centrally we find that combined payoffs are larger with decentralized control if payoffs are sufficiently heterogeneous and initial pollution stocks are sufficiently small this result is obtained because the central authority applies one shadow price to pollution i e it uses uniform standards whereas local authorities use different shadow prices and therefore different standards

the optimal number of firms in the commons a dynamic approach we consider a common property resource sold in imperfectly competitive markets there is a dynamic externality current harvests lower future stocks raising future harvest costs and a static crowding externality increasing industry size raises costs but lowers prices thus it has ambiguous welfare effects the optimal industry size typically changes over time so that a first best outcome cannot be obtained with a fixed number of firms single firm exploitation is optimal only under special circumstances the socially optimal open loop steady state industry size corresponds to the static optimum both generally differ from the closed loop steady state optimum

an existence theorem on the stationary state of income distribution and population growth through a utility maximizing process individuals derive their optimal fertility and bequest decisions both as functions of their initial socioeconomic backgrounds the combination of these two decisions form a multi type galton watson process under weak assumptions it is proved that the economy will converge to a unique stationary state which implies both a constant population growth rate and a time invariant income distribution as such this paper extends the becker willis static micro level fertility demand model to a dynamic macro level population growth model alternatively our model can be viewed as a generalization of laitners stochastic income theory where no differential fertility is allowed excerpt

human capital and income inequality in india is there a non linear and asymmetric relationship the article attempts to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between human capital and income inequality in india in a non linear and asymmetric framework to capture both long run and sh

economic consequences of an aging population pip europe and japan are experiencing the aging of their populations aging implies a restructuring of the economy political issues which arise in an aging society include 1 a voting majority for the interests of the elderly 2 a voting majority of females 3 the domination of the decision power in corporate and similar ruling bodies and 4 unemployment or a long wait for promotion for younger people economic issues of an aging society include 1 population aging often occurs under reduced rates of growth of per capita national income 2 the relative economic status of the elderly very much depends on the currently existing tax transfer systems and 3 the income of families whose head is over age 65 has generally been more unequally distributed than the income for younger families issues concerning the labor supply of the elderly include 1 the availability of pension income and health limitations strongly influence decisions to retire and 2 older workers become disheartened and choose early retirement when facing bad reemployment prospects in general population aging is likely to have its most substantive effect on the overall level of productivity in an economy where technical knowledge is changing rapidly and strong competition necessitates a high degree of adaptability of the labor force

human capital and inequality in singapore development economists have long been concerned with the relationship between income growth and income distribution kuznets and adelman and morris among others have suggested various hypotheses to account for an observed regularity the u hypothesis l this empirical observation found in countries which have undergone economic development is quite common income distribution becomes at first more unequal and only in the later stages does it become more equal in recent years we have also seen the rapid development of human capital theory and its successful application to various social and economic behavior one of the most actively researched areas is the personal distribution of income there are several recent attempts to apply the human capital approach to developing economies using the mincer model 2 skeptics can object to the serious discrepancies between the assumptions of the theoretical model and the reality in developing countries the derivation of the mincer earnings function proceeds from the assumption of equalizing differentials within the labor market which is a questionable assumption for developing coun