Journal of Income Distribution®最新文献

{"title":"Inequality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions","authors":"Stephan Klasen","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40397","url":null,"abstract":"Global inequality has been falling in the last 20 or 30 years, mainly because of rising incomes in China, India, and, more recently, also in Africa. That has been good for global justice and poverty reduction, but not for greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the majority of growth in emissions since 1990 has taken place in emerging countries. As a result, if global inequality continues to fall, we have to confront the fact that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise. There is no easy solution to this problem, since it is very difficult for emerging countries to drastically change their emission pathways. But there are some policies that might help, including, for example, the removal of energy subsidies and a greater focus on air pollution and energy security, both of which are co-benefits of moving away from fossil energy. The question also remains whether more unequal countries emit more or less greenhouse gases. Theoretical arguments in this regard are ambiguous. We find that in poorer countries, higher inequality actually reduces per capita emissions, mainly because it pushes poor people out of the carbon economy and forces them to lead carbon-neutral lives, relying entirely on biomass. However, in richer countries, inequality is associated with rising emissions. Therefore, if we reduce inequality in rich countries, we will also help reduce emissions. But how to think about climate policy? Economists have very much focused on the idea that there is a first best climate policy with a global carbon price, achieved either through an emission trading scheme or a carbon tax. But one should realize that climate policy in practice involves many different initiatives at many different levels. The driving forces of such policies are often the co-benefits such as cleaner air or greater energy security than emission reduction. If we recognize this, then our analysis should focus not on trying to design first best, but unrealistic policies, but rather on studying the interactions between existing policies and on trying to improve their functioning. This will be a much more promising way to tackle climate change than focusing on an unrealistic first best option.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114307949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Causality between Output and Income Inequality across U.S. States: Evidence from a Heterogeneous Mixed Panel Approach","authors":"Shinhye Chang, Hsiao-Ping Chu, Rangan Gupta, S. Miller","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40331","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we investigate the causal relationship between output, proxied by personal income, and income inequality in a panel data of 48 states from 1929 to 2012. We employ the causality methodology proposed by Emirmahmutoglu and Kose (2011), as it incorporates possible slope heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence in a multivariate panel. Evidence of bi-directional causal relationship exists for several inequality measures -- the Atkinson Index, Gini Coefficient, the Relative Mean Deviation, Theil’s entropy Index and Top 10% -- but no evidence of the causal relationship for the Top 1 % measure. Also, this paper finds state-specific causal relationships between personal income and inequality.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"114 7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116251977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Income redistribution through taxation – how deductions undermine the effect of taxes","authors":"Oliver Hümbelin, Rudolf Farys","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40330","url":null,"abstract":"This paper shows the potential of administrative data to grant us a more complete picture of the redistributive effects of the visible (tax rates) and hidden (tax deductions) instruments of the fiscal welfare state. Based on administrative tax data from a large Swiss canton, we apply a gini-based redistributive effect decomposition to demonstrate how several taxes and deductions impact the post-tax income distribution. We show that tax deductions drastically reduce the redistributive effect of taxes because lump sum deductions in a progressive tax system lead to greater tax relief for higher income earners. Moreover, high income earners have additional options to claim deductions such as real-estate expenses or extra-mandatory payments to the pension scheme. Comparison over time furthermore shows that the role of deductions for real-estate expenses decreased. All in all, because deductions reduce the redistributive effect of taxes, they lead to higher post tax income inequality compared to a hypothetical system without deducations. The redistrubtive effect of the tax system should therefore be studied, not only with respect to tax rates, but also with respect to deductions.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"328 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124621648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Informal Transfers in Comparisons of Income Distributions: Lessons from Rich and Middle-Income Countries","authors":"Yixia Cai, Martin Evans","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40349","url":null,"abstract":"Developing countries rely more heavily on financial transfers between private households for economic welfare. Using data from three middle income and three high income countries in the Luxembourg Income Study Database, this paper examines the effects of such transfers on within country comparison of inequality. Deducting private transfer payments from disposable income increases inequality, but effects differ by the position of donor and receiving households in the distribution, by urban or rural location and by age of household members. We conclude that considering the role of private financial transfers is crucial to income inequality analysis.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115814521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Inequality and Conflict","authors":"J. Esteban","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40379","url":null,"abstract":"Over the second half of the 20th century, the frequency of conflicts within national boundaries increased. One-third of all countries experienced civil conflict. There are two remarkable facts about social conflict that deserve attention: first, within-country conflicts account for an enormous share of deaths and hardship in the world today, and second, internal conflicts often appear to be ethnic in nature. Which factors influence social conflict? Do ethnic divisions predict conflict within countries? How do we conceptualize those divisions? If ethnic cleavages and conflicts are related, how do we interpret such a result? Is ethnicity instrumental achieving political power or economic gain? We provide indices of ethnic diversity in the society, fractionalization and ethnic polarization, and find significant relationships with respect to social conflict.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125068998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Including Private Health Care Costs in Measuring Nations’ Redistributive Effort","authors":"K. Baird","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40341","url":null,"abstract":"Because they do not account for the private component of household’s health care expenses, measures of nations’ redistributive effort inconsistently account for the financial burden their health-care system places on different households. We recalculate the effect of government policy on income distribution by adjusting household income not just for taxes and social transfers, but also for private health expenditures. Examining eight LIS datasets, we show the degree of bias in typical measures of post-government income distribution. In Switzerland and the U.S., for instance, post-government poverty rates climb by 3-4 percentage points once households’ private medical expenses are subtracted from income. Future assessments of governments’ redistributive effect should uniformly account for the distributional impact of their health-care financing policies.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122237169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indirect taxes and government inequality reduction: A cross-national analysis of the developed world","authors":"V. Mahler, David K. Jesuit","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40339","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the role of indirect taxes in helping to finance public social transfers in the developed countries, with special attention to the seeming paradox whereby countries whose social benefit programs provide the most inequality reduction tend to finance those programs with the most regressive tax mix. It finds that the share of indirect taxes in a country’s GDP and the degree to which market inequality is reduced by public social transfers are positively related, even controlling for other tax types, the share of the population that is elderly and the unemployment rate; that a large indirect tax burden is politically possible because of some combination of fiscal illusion and the fact that indirect taxes do not retard economic growth or investment; and that the high indirect taxes that finance public social transfers are often the product of a political process in which democratic corporatism, institutional structures and union density play key roles. The article concludes with a discussion of the incidence of indirect taxes, finding that their regressive effect is outweighed by the redistribution accomplished by the public social transfers they help to finance.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"42 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129668951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Under the Rising Wave. How Disaggregated Revenue Sources Can Tell Another Story for Québec’s Top Income Share","authors":"Nicolas Zorn, Olivier Jacques","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40335","url":null,"abstract":"Top income investigations usually rely on types of earnings that remain at a tively aggregated level. Using a novel disaggregated dataset for Québec’s top earners, we map the recent evolution of different types of income for the top one percent. Hidden under the steady increase of the top income share, we find that there has been very divergent and sharp rises of different revenue sources at specific moments. When looking at disaggregated data, composition effects and historical counterfactuals in Québec invalidate market-based theories like globalization and skilled biased technical change, but not institution-based theories like financialization, taxation and union strength.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129691635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tackling Income Inequality: What Works and Why?","authors":"Jose Cuesta, M. Negre, Ana Revenga, M. Schmidt","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40357","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews the most recent and relevant evidence on key domestic policy interventions that are effective in reducing income inequality in developing countries, the benefits they generate, the choices that need to be made regarding their design and implementation, and the trade-offs that are associated with them. It focuses on a few policy areas in which there is a sufficient body of rigorous evidence to draw useful lessons with confidence: early childhood development, including breastfeeding; universal health care; good-quality education; conditional cash transfers; Investments in rural infrastructure; and taxation. The review concludes that there are many pathways to reducing inequality, from narrowing gaps in income generation opportunities to narrowing the potential for inequalities in human capital development before the inequalities emerge, smoothing consumption among the most deprived, and Redistribution in favor of the poor. Many interventions are simultaneously associated with equalizing outcomes, improved competition, and economic efficiency. Good interventions combining equality promotion and efficiency are possible in all settings and at different times; this includes interventions disproportionately benefiting the poorest in low-income countries during periods of crisis. Despite the significant increase in knowledge about equality interventions, the article makes a strong call for more microeconomic data and better—more precise—analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130487822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Some problems in Piketty: an internal critique","authors":"A. Tapper","doi":"10.25071/1874-6322.40304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40304","url":null,"abstract":"Thomas Piketty’s evidence on wealth distribution trends in Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows that – contra his own interpretation – there has been little rise in wealth inequality in Europe and America since the 1970s. This article relates that finding to the other principal trends in Piketty’s analysis: the capital/national income ratio trend, the capital-labor split of total incomes and the income inequality trend. Given that wealth inequality is not rising markedly, what can we deduce about the putative causes that might be operating upstream? Only the capital-labor split looks like a plausible explanation of the wealth inequality trend.","PeriodicalId":142300,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Income Distribution®","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114806998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}