INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

Inequalities and Preference for Redistribution
Inequalities have increased over the last thirty years. However, this increase has not been the same inevery country. Moreover, the perception of these inequalities differs across countries in a paradoxical way:concern about inequality is the largest in Europe, where it has been actually slighter. Differences between
actual inequalities and their perception could be explained by a difference of values in the three regionsof study, USA, Europe and Japan. Does the perception of inequalities matter more than the objective
determinants of inequalities as it leads to different forms of redistribution?
Day 1: July 6th, from 9:00 to 16:30
Day 2: July 7th, from 9:00 to 12:30
Venue: Doshisha University, Imadegawa Campus,		
Hakuenkan building, Meeting room #501
This international workshop is co-organized by EHESS (Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS) and Doshisha University(Life Risk Research Center) in the framework of the research project "Inequalities and Preference for Redistribution"
supported by the Toyota Foundation.

RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM 2016

Program
July 6th
9:00: Opening remarks by Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS, FFJ) & Tadashi Yagi (Doshisha University)
9:10: Keynote speech by Christina Fong (Carnegie Mellon University)

Redistributive Politics with Target-Specific Beliefs
10:40: Coffee break

Session I: Poverty Perception, Attitude towards
Government Role, and Preference for Redistribution
11:00: Zhou Xun (Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics)
Preference for Redistribution and Poverty Perception in China using the CGSS 2006 and a Multivariate Ordered
Probit Models with Endogeneity
Discussant: Conchita D’Ambrosio (University of Luxembourg)

11:50: Ryo Kambayashi (Hitotsubashi University) & Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS), co-written with Marc Jenmana(PSE)
Revisiting Cross-National Variations in Preference for Redistribution: A Comparison between US, France, andJapan
Discussant: Andrew E. Clark (Paris School of Economics)

12:40: Lunch break

Session II: Political Economy Perspective
14:00: Andrew E. Clark (Paris School of Economics)
Economic Insecurity and Political Preferences
Discussant: Christina Fong (Carnegie Mellon University)

14:50: Toshiaki Tachibanaki (Kyoto Women’s University) & Sayaka Sakoda (Doshisha University)
Attitudes towards Inequality and Re-distribution
Discussant: Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS)

15:40 - 16:30: Discussion

July 7thSession III: Asian Cases
9:00: Conchita D’Ambrosio (University of Luxembourg), co-written with Andrew E. Clark & Anthony Lepinteur.
Living Conditions and Well-Being: Evidence from Asian Countries
Discussant: Ryo Kambayashi (Hitotsubashi University)

9:50: Arnaud Lefranc (Université de Cergy-Pontoise), co-written with Fumiaki Ojima (Doshisha University)
Assortative Mating, Female Labour Supply and Income Inequality in Japan
Discussant: Toshiaki Tachibanaki (Kyoto Women’s University)

10:40: Coffee break
11:00: Kunio Urakawa (Kyushu University)
Does Learning Opportunity at College Affect Preference for Redistribution? The Case of Japan
Discussant: Arnaud Lefranc (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)

11:50: Concluding remarks by Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS, FFJ) and discussion
12:30: End of the workshop

List of Communications
Redistributive Politics with Target-specific Beliefs
By Christina Fong

There is perennial tension between the generosity of means-tested transfers and the work efforts of recipients.
Individual support for these policies is associated with beliefs about whether the poor are lazy or industrious. At thesame time, support for general redistribution from the rich to the poor is viewed in terms of general beliefs that luckrather than effort determines income (or mobility). This research takes a first step toward unifying these literaturesby incorporating target-specific beliefs about the rich and the poor into a model that broadly follows key insightsfrom the literature on general beliefs and preferences for redistribution. We develop and test a theory about support
for redistribution in the presence of target-specific beliefs about the causes of low and high incomes. Our theory
predicts that target-specific beliefs about the poor matter most for preferences about transfers to the poor, andtarget-specific beliefs about the rich matter most for preferences about taxation of the rich. Survey evidence fromthe United States and from Germany, the latter using survey questions we wrote for a module of the German SocioEconomic Panel, confirms this. We find that 42% of Americans give different answers when asked, respectively,
about the reasons for being rich and the reasons for being poor. Experimental evidence on giving money to real
welfare recipients provides additional support for our theory.

Preference for Redistribution and Poverty Perception in China using the CGSS 2006
and a Multivariate Ordered Probit Models with Endogeneity
By Zhou Xun

We develop a multivariate ordered probit model with endogeneity of a binary explanatory variable to investigate theconditional correlations between preference for redistribution and the perceived role of "circumstances" and "effort"in China. Being a migrant can be endogeneous and its effect is identified via heteroskedasticity of the error term inorder to analyse the impact of the Hukou system upon attitudes. The model is estimated using the GHK simulator
and two solutions are proposed to impose the positivity of the correlation matrix. The correlations found validate thehypothesis of a "sense of fairness" for China.

Revisiting Cross-National Variations in Preference for Redistribution: A Comparison
betweenUS, France, and Japan
By Ryo Kambayashi, Sébastien Lechevalier and Thanasak Jenmana

There are significant differences across countries in terms of redistribution by the government and they may
correspond to underlying dissimilarities in preference for redistribution across the population of these countries.
In particular, previous literature has compared the US and Europe from this viewpoint, and proposed several
explanations of these differences, from aggregation of individual determinants (e.g. one’s income) to more holistic
ones such as shared values at the national level (Alesina & Giulano, 2009; Alesina & La Ferrara, 2004; Alesina etal., 2004).
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this literature by analyzing the impact of socio-demographic factors
and social beliefs on preference for redistribution and by trying to extend the comparison between Europe and theUS by including the case of a developed Asian country, Japan. More precisely, by relying on the 2009 issue of theInternational Social Survey Program, our aim is to explain different preferences for redistribution across the US,
France and Japan.
By focusing on the differences and commonalities across the three countries in the answers to two questions – thegovernment role in reducing the difference in income and the way the tax system deals with high income, we areable to get the following results. We first confirm the opposition between Europe and the US regarding redistributive
policies and progressive taxation. We second identify a different logic in Japan with general support for welfarepolicies that would reduce inequalities but distrust in the taxation system.

Economic Insecurity and Political Preferences
By Andrew Clark

We here take advantage of long-running British and German individual panel datasets (BHPS and SOEP) andcontribute to the literature on the determinants of political preferences. We first show that economic insecurity
significantly increases the probability of supporting a political party in both the UK and Germany. We thendemonstrate that economic insecurity does not benefit all parties equally. Greater economic insecurity significantly
increases support for Right-wing parties (the Conservative Party in the UK and the CDU/CSU in Germany) andto a lesser extent Centre parties (the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the FDP in Germany). On the contrary,
support for Left-wing parties falls with economic insecurity, except in East Germany where SPD support rises witheconomic insecurity. Economic insecurity always increases Right-wing party support in both countries over all time
periods. A number of heterogeneity tests based on individual characteristics are explored, and carry out a numberof robustness tests.

Attitudes towards Inequality and Re-distribution  
By Toshiaki Tachibanaki and Sayaka Sakoda

The paper examines the effect of globalism, populism, and self-responsibility on inequality and re-distribution
policies. As economists we pay attention to the tradeoff-relationship between efficiency and equity. Although Japanis picked up as a main empirical example, we take into account various circumstances which are observed in theother advanced countries. The study argues whether several findings obtained in the fields of philosophy andpsychology are useful to understand the issues of inequality and redistribution. Finally, we are going to present ourviews to solve the current problems related to inequality in the world.

Living Conditions and Well-Being: Evidence from Asian Countries
By Conchita D’Ambrosio, Andrew E. Clark and Anthony Lepinteur

We here use three rounds of Asianbarometer data covering more than 17,000 individuals over the 2005-2015 period
to explore the link between self-assessed measures of living conditions (present and future) and objective measuresof individual well-being (access to basic needs). These latter are picked up by various indices of deprivation,satisfaction and inequality. We find evidence of comparisons to those who are better off, in terms of access to basic
needs, in the evaluation of current living conditions. We also find some evidence of comparisons to those who is areworse off in the evaluation of future living conditions. Overall, subjective well-being is both absolute and relative in
Asian countries. There is notable heterogeneity by level of development, with the comparisons effects being more
pronounced in poorer countries.

Assortative mating, female labour supply and income inequality in Japan
By Arnaud Lefranc and Fumiaki Ojima

Recent research has underscored that assortative mating and female labor supply patterns play a significant
role in shaping income inequality between households. This paper analyzes economic assortative mating and its
contribution to inequality in Japan, in a comparative perspective. We provide descriptive evidence on the statisticalassociation in several socio-economic attributes of partners among Japanese couples (participation, earnings,education, occupation). Over the last 4 decades, Japan experienced a strong rise in female labor force participation
as well as a slow rise in income inequality. We use data from the Employment Status Survey over the period 19822012 to shed lights on these evolutions and to assess the contribution of assortative mating to earnings inequality
between couples.

Does Learning Opportunity at College Affect Preference for Redistribution? - The
Case of Japan
By Kunio Urakawa

In recent years, analyses of people’s preference for redistribution have been conducted actively among various
countries and international institutions. Research on preference for redistribution leads to the discovery andreconsideration of people’s traits and behavioral principles that were previously overlooked in society.
This study focuses on the relation between learning opportunity and study experience at college and preference forredistribution, using Japanese microdata, reflecting Japan’s recent trend of strict selection of priority universities.
In the analytical results, the variables for life support at college showed no significant correlation with "sense ofincome disparity" and "preference for redistribution". However, graduates of G30 Universities (accepted by theMEXT’s Global 30 project) and universities whose learning support levels are high tend to more represent anagreement with redistribution, even after controlling other covariates such as household types, SESs, childhood
cultural capital. Opportunities for higher benefits through redistribution in the field of higher education field might
affect the evaluations for current disparity and government redistribution.

Presentation of Speakers
Conchita D’Ambrosio is Professorof Economics, FNR PEARL Chair,at Université du Luxembourg. She isan economist, with a Ph.D. from New
York University (2000). Her researchinterests have revolved around thestudy of individual and social wellbeing, its determinants, and theproposal of various measures that are able to capture
its different aspects. Before joining the University of
Luxembourg in 2013, she was Associate Professor ofEconomics at the Università di Milano-Bicocca.
Andrew Clark holds a PhD fromthe London School of Economics.
He is currently a CNRS Research
Professor at the Paris School ofEconomics (PSE), and previously
held posts at Dartmouth, Essex,
CEPREMAP, DELTA, the OECDand the University of Orléans.
His work has largely focussed on the interface between
psychology, sociology and economics; in particular,using job and life satisfaction scores, and otherpsychological indices, as proxy measures of utility, andthus to help us to understand the structure of individual
preferences and therefore of behaviour. His broad
area of study is social interactions and social learning.
In addition to his Paris position, he is research associate
at Flinders University, the London School of Economics
and IZA (Bonn). He is on the Editorial Board of eight
journals, and has acted as referee for over 190 different
journals in Economics, Sociology, Psychology andStatistics.

Christina Fong is Senior Research
Scientist in the Department of Socialand Decision Sciences at Carnegie
Mellon University. She holds a PhDin Economics from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. Workingon public economics, experimentaleconomics,
andbehaviouraleconomics, much of her research focuses on the role offairness in redistributive attitudes and behaviour.
Ryo Kambayashi is Professor at
the Institute of Economic Research,
Hitotsubashi University. His research
field is labour economics, law andeconomics, Japanese economic
history and institutional economics.
He earned his PhD in economics fromthe Graduate School of Economics,
University of Tokyo and was previously an Associate
Professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, a visiting
scholar at the Department of Economics, Stanford
University.

Sébastien
Lechevalier:Aneconomist by training, Sébastien
Lechevalier offers a research
program at the crossroads of political
economy, socio-economics andeconomic history. Author of several
books on the Japanese economy(The Great Transformation ofJapanese Capitalism, 2014; Leçons de l’expériencejaponaise. Vers une autre politique économique ?,2016), he also edited special issues in several reviews,
including «Vers un renouveau de l’Etat développeur enAsie ?» (Critique Internationale, 2014) and “Bringing
Asia into the Comparative Capitalism Perspective”(Socio-Economic Review, 2013). He is also one of thefounders of the research network “Asian Capitalisms”
within SASE (Society for the Advancement of SocioEconomics). Based on the experience gained instudying the Japanese case, he wishes to extend his
research to other forms of capitalism in Asia while
making comparisons with Europe.
Sayaka Sakoda is an AssistantProfessor at the faculty of Economics
in Doshisha University, Kyoto andobtained her PhD in 2016. She
works on topics related to income
distribution, family economics andhealth economics. She was alsoa visiting scholar at the Fondation
France-Japon de l’EHESS Paris dispatched by JSPS
project during one year from which currently is anAssociate Researcher.

poverty.

Kunio Urakawa is an Associate
Professor of Public Economics andWelfare Policy in the Department ofEconomic Engineering at Kyushu
University, Japan. He gained a Ph.Din Economics from Kyoto University
in 2007. He has conducted empiricalstudies on income distribution and

XUN Zhou obtained his PhD fromGREQAM, Marseille, supervisedby Michel Lubrano. He is currently
lecturer at Jiangxi University ofFinanceandEconomics
andHead of the Western Economics
Department. His research interests
include subjective measurement,social dynamics, inequality and poverty. He is in chargeof the research program "Preference for redistribution
and poverty cause perception, from the perspective ofsocial mobility", funded by the Chinese National NaturalScience Fund.

Toshiaki Tachibanaki is currently
visiting professor at Kyoto Women’s
University. After finishing his Ph.D.
in economics at Johns Hopkins
University in the US, he held positionsat INSEE and OECD in France. Hewas professor at Kyoto and Doshisha
Universities in Japan. His fields arelabour economics and public economics. He publishedmore than 100 books, including edited books, both inEnglish and Japanese, notably Wage Determination
and Distribution in Japan, Oxford University Press,
and Confronting Income Inequality in Japan, MIT Press,
and numerous articles in English, Japanese and French.

RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM 2016