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452. The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index: A New Global Ranking of Governments Based on What They are Doing to Tackle the Gap Between Rich and Poor
- Author:
- Max Lawson and Matthew Martin
- Publication Date:
- 07-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- In 2015, the leaders of 193 governments promised to reduce inequality as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Without reducing inequality, meeting the SDG to eliminate poverty will be impossible. Now Development Finance International and Oxfam have produced the first index to measure the commitment of governments to reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index uses a new database of indicators covering 152 countries, which measures government action on social spending, tax and labour rights – three areas found to be critical to reducing inequality. This first version of the CRI Index is work in progress, and DFI and Oxfam welcome comments and additions. We find that there is an urgent need for coordinated global investment to significantly improve the data on inequality and policies to reduce it, and much greater concerted action by governments across the world to reduce the gap between rich and poor.
- Topic:
- Education, Health Care Policy, Inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, Tax Systems, and Land
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
453. High-Priced Medicines and Lack of Needs-Driven Innovation: A Global Crisis that Fuels Inequality
- Author:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- On 14 September 14 2016, the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines publicly released its final report entitled ‘Promoting innovation and access to health technologies’. One year after the release of the landmark report and building upon Oxfam’s September 2016 assessment, this paper provides an update on where the HLP report and its recommendations stand. It assesses the level of implementation by countries and institutions – especially the UN and the World Health Organization – and recommends ways to use the report to improve both innovation and access to medicines.
- Topic:
- Health, International Cooperation, United Nations, World Health Organization, Inequality, Innovation, Humanitarian Crisis, and Medicine
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
454. Is IMF Tax Policy Progressive?
- Author:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Publication Date:
- 10-2017
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- The IMF has significant influence on the tax policies of developing countries through advice and conditionality, technical assistance and by setting global standards and analyzing global trends. Its rhetoric has become more progressive in recent years. This paper assesses the IMF’s tax advice to developing countries based on five country case studies (Ghana, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Peru, Senegal) over the period 2010 to 2015 and supported by a desk study of public IMF documents. It finds that there is a gap between the IMF’s commitment to leveraging fiscal policy to fight inequality, and its actual tax advice to developing countries.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, Inequality, Tax Systems, IMF, and Progressivism
- Political Geography:
- Africa, South America, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Senegal, Peru, and Ghana
455. Great Expectations: Is the IMF Turning Words into Action on Inequality?
- Author:
- Nadia Daar, Nicholas Galasso, and Chiara Mariotti
- Publication Date:
- 10-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- In recent years, the International Monetary Fund has become a global leader in highlighting the inequality crisis; consistently identifying it as a major threat to human progress and prosperity. This is a significant shift from its previously held position that rising inequality was a necessary trade-off for achieving greater economic growth. What is the IMF doing in practice to operationalize its agenda for tackling inequality? The IMF’s main initiative has been a series of pilots that integrate inequality analysis into its economic surveillance of countries. This paper outlines Oxfam’s evaluation of these pilots and finds that they are not promoting policies that reduce inequality. It gives recommendations for the IMF to systematically incorporate the fight against inequality into its research and its actions on the ground
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, Financial Crisis, Inequality, and IMF
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
456. The impact of pension system reform on projected old-age income: the case of Poland
- Author:
- Elena Jarocinska and Anna Ruzik-Sierdzińska
- Publication Date:
- 05-2016
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
- Abstract:
- This paper analyses the distributional effects of the Polish old-age pension reform introduced in 1999. Following a benchmark Mincer earnings equation, and using a newly developed microsimulation model we project future pension benefits for males born in years 1969–1979. We find that inequality of predicted first pension benefits measured by the Gini coefficient increases from 0.119 to 0.165 for cohorts of men retiring between 2036 and 2046. The observed increased inequality of pension benefits is due to the decreasing share of initial capital that is based on a more generous DB formula in the total accumulated pension capital. At the same time, inequality in replacements rates decreases due to a stronger link between contributions paid through the entire working life and pension benefits.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Economics, Labor Issues, Inequality, Social Policy, Public Policy, Innovation, and Aging
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Poland, and European Union
457. The Collaborative Economy in Poland and Europe: A Tool for Boosting Female Employment?
- Author:
- Karolina Beaumont
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
- Abstract:
- The collaborative economy is a relatively new economic approach based on peer-to-peer transactions. It includes the shared creation, production and consumption of goods and services accessible for all through online platforms and smartphone applications. It is a burgeoning business model that is experiencing increased interest in all European countries. Statistics show that Poland already has an above-average number of women who are interested in self-employment. Furthermore, formal female employment in Poland is quite low by European standards. This situation implies great potential for the development of the participation of women in the collaborative economy. The paper “The Collaborative Economy in Poland and Europe: A Tool for Boosting Female Employment?” by Karolina Beaumont discusses the challenges of the collaborative economy as a system stimulating female social and economic empowerment and assesses the opportunities offered by the collaborative economy in increasing the female labour participation rate amongst Polish women.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, Inequality, Economy, Social Policy, and Labor Policies
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Poland
458. Researching the Killer Fact That Highlighted Global Economic Inequality
- Author:
- Leila Smith
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- This case study of research in practice describes how in 2014 Oxfam staff researched and developed a powerful killer fact ' that the 85 richest people owned as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people ' and how this triggered international media coverage, political commentary, and record-level website hits.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Media, Inequality, and Economic Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
459. Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
- Author:
- Jeronim Capaldo and Alex Izurieta
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- Proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) emphasize its prospective economic benefits, with economic growth increasing due to rising trade volumes and investment. Widely cited projections suggest modest GDP gains after ten years, varying from less than half a percentage point in the United States to 13 percent in Vietnam. However, these projections assume full employment and constant income distribution in all countries excluding some of the major risks of trade liberalization. In this paper, we provide alternative projections of the TPP’s economic effects using the United Nations Global Policy Model. Allowing for changes in employment and income distribution, we obtain very different results. We find that the benefits to economic growth are even smaller than those projected with full-employment models, and are negative for Japan and the United States. More important, we find that the TPP will likely lead to losses in employment and increases in inequality.
- Topic:
- Regional Cooperation, Inequality, Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Unemployment
- Political Geography:
- United States, Asia, Vietnam, North America, and Asia-Pacific
460. Core Support for the New Economy
- Author:
- Neva Goodwin
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- This paper proposes an income guarantee that would be defined as compensation for household activities such as childcare, food preparation, care of elderly or ill persons in the home, maintenance of the home and of household vehicles and appliances, and household-based transportation. I will call it Core Support, or CS. The Core Support proposal is put forth as a way to achieve a number of important goals, including reduction of poverty and inequality, increased fairness and better old-age security, and improved possibilities for good child care and education. It could replace much of the burdensome and expensive apparatus of welfare and some other government programs. Rather than providing a handout, it would expressly reward and enable some of the unpaid work on which every society depends, validating these activities as legitimate labor. As described in this proposal, it could have a significant impact in healthy redefinition of gender norms. In addition, the proposed program would reduce the requirement for all members of society to take paid work, thus rebalancing power between employers and employees. By reducing the pressure to create jobs, regardless of their quality or their impact, it would make it easier to cease production of socially or environmentally harmful goods and services. However, it would create a not inconsiderable amount of new work in managing the program. Depending on whether there is too much, or too little, demand for labor in the macroeconomy, this could be desirable, or not. This idea builds on literature on Basic Income Guarantees (BIG), as well as on some work in feminist economics. The latter tends to be skeptical of BIG proposals. It is hoped that the CS proposal, by addressing intra-household allocations – a topic normally absent from BIG proposals – can respond to this skepticism by showing how a basic income system can be designed so as to promote deep cultural changes in gender norms and widen respect for those who do the essential core work of a society. If it is assumed that the CS funds depend on taxable income, then it would be necessary for the economy in which it is implemented to have a preexisting flow of money from the sale of privately produced goods and services; thus it would appear that this approach would not be feasible in poor countries. Hence, given a focus on the U.S. context, some attention will be paid to the question of how “wealthy” this country will be in coming decades. It is possible to imagine macroeconomic conditions in which people are “poor” because they lack money to buy needed goods and services that are in fact being produced in the economy. In this case the central bank could create money to be distributed in amounts that would enable local trade, benefiting both producers and households, and possibly leading to higher levels of output.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Poverty, Women, Inequality, and Economic Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
461. Global Safe Haven Bonding Foreign and Domestic Owners of the U.S. Public Debt
- Author:
- Sandy Brian Hager
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
- Abstract:
- This paper offers new theoretical and empirical insights to explain the resilience of the U.S. Treasuries market as a safe haven for global investment. Going beyond the standard systemic explanation, the paper highlights the importance of domestic politics in reinforcing the safe haven status of U.S. Treasury securities. In particular, the research shows how a formidable “bond” of interests unites domestic and foreign owners of the public debt and works to sustain U.S. power in global finance. Foreigners who now own roughly half of the U.S. public debt have something to gain from their domestic counterparts. The top one percent of U.S. households that dominate domestic ownership of the U.S. public debt have considerable political clout, thus alleviating foreign concerns about the creditworthiness of the U.S. federal government. Domestic owners of the U.S. public debt, in turn, have something to gain from the seemingly insatiable foreign appetite for U.S. Treasury securities. In supplying the U.S. federal government and U.S. households with cheap credit, foreign investors in U.S. Treasuries help to deflect challenges to the top one percent within the wealth and income hierarchy.
- Topic:
- Debt, Economics, International Political Economy, Inequality, and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States and United Kingdom
462. Global Value Chains or Global Poverty Chains? A new research agenda
- Author:
- Benjamin Selwyn
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
- Abstract:
- Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis is part and parcel of mainstream development discourse and policy. Supplier firms are encouraged, with state support, to ‘link-up’ with trans-national lead firms. Such arrangements, it is argued, will reduce poverty and contribute to meaningful socio-economic development. This portrayal of global political economic relations represents a ‘problem-solving’ interpretation of reality. This article proposes an alternative analytical approach rooted in ‘critical theory’ which reformulates the GVC approach to better investigate and explain the reproduction of global poverty, inequality and divergent forms of national development. It suggests re-labelling GVC as Global Poverty Chain (GPC) analysis. GPC’s are examined in the textiles, food, and high-tech sectors. The article details how workers in these chains are systematically paid less than their subsistence costs, how trans-national corporations use their global monopoly power to capture the lion’s share of value created within these chains, and how these relations generate processes of immiserating growth. The article concludes by considering how to extend GPC analysis.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, International Political Economy, Labor Issues, Inequality, and Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Eastern Europe, and Asia
463. Journal of Public and International Affairs 2016
- Author:
- Megan Campbell, Geoff Cooper, Kathryn Alexander, Aneliese Bernard, Nastasha Everheart, Andrej Litvinjenko, Kabira Namit, Saman Rejali, Alisa Tiwari, and Michael Wagner
- Publication Date:
- 05-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
- Institution:
- School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
- Abstract:
- It is rare to find a journal that examines women’s participation in South Sudan in one chapter and the exploitation of outer space resources in the next; that dissects the effects of Chinese investment in Sub-Saharan Africa and demystifies the Ferguson effect. But the Journal of Public and International Affairs is not your average journal. It represents the very best of what graduate-level public policy students have to contribute to the pressing policy debates of today. It is wide-ranging in subject matter and trenchant in its recommendations. Founded in 1990, but with an ancestor publication dating back to 1963, the JPIA is based on the notion that students of public policy have important things to say about public affairs and that careful analysis and targeted critique can pave the way for meaningful change and progress. The graduate students published in this year’s JPIA combine practical experience from around the world with intensive academic study. They have spent the last year diving deep into the issues they are passionate about and have all been challenged by the need to move past descriptive analysis and towards concrete solutions. These papers represent the best of their scholarship.
- Topic:
- Security, Gender Issues, Government, Regional Cooperation, International Affairs, Foreign Direct Investment, Counter-terrorism, Women, Inequality, Protests, Policy Implementation, Rural, and Sanitation
- Political Geography:
- China, Iran, Middle East, India, Central America, West Africa, North America, South Sudan, Sahel, and United States of America
464. How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers
- Author:
- William Lazonick, Philip Moss, and Joshua Weitz
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- On June 2, 1965, under a mandate established by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Congress created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws related to employment. The expectation was that African Americans would be prime beneficiaries of the EEOC. There was no assumption that the EEOC, on its own, could reverse deep-rooted employment discrimination against blacks. But in the late 1960s there was optimism that, in combination with equal educational opportunity and the strong demand for unionized workers in the well-paid manufacturing jobs that marked the post-World War II decades, the EEOC could help to ensure that an ever-increasing number of blacks would ascend to the American middle class. African Americans as a group are better educated than they were in the 1960s, and, as discriminatory norms and practices have lessened, large numbers of college-educated blacks have experienced upward employment mobility into professional, technical, and administrative occupations. But the promise of a large-scale ascendancy of blacks to middle-class status, characterized by secure and well-paid employment, has not been fulfilled. Our basic thesis is that, in combination with the institutions of racism which remain widespread in American society, the erosion of secure and well-paid employment opportunities is a major reason for the persistence since the 1980s of African Americans as disproportionately disadvantaged. Our contribution to the larger debate on the economics of race is to focus on the role of corporate resource allocation as the prime determinant of the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the economy. The decline of middle-class employment opportunities has adversely affected the majority of the U.S. labor force of all races, ethnicities, and genders. African Americans, however, have been more vulnerable than other demographic groups to this decline. U.S. institutions of corporate governance vest power over major resource-allocation decisions in the hands of senior executives, supported by their hand-picked corporate boards. Given the enormous size of the major business corporations and their centrality to economic activity, the resource-allocation decisions made by senior executives of major U.S. corporations profoundly influence the operation and performance of the economy as a whole—including the availability, or not, of secure and well-paid employment opportunities. The failure to include an analysis of corporate resource allocation and how it has changed over the past half century in the policy debate on income inequality is what we call the “equal employment opportunity omission.”
- Topic:
- Race, Employment, Inequality, Civil Rights, Legislation, and Equality
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
465. The Mismeasure of Mammon: Uses and Abuses of Executive Pay Data
- Author:
- Matt Hopkins and William Lazonick
- Publication Date:
- 10-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- On April 7, 2016, the Wall Street Journal ran an article headlined “CEO pay shrank most since financial crisis,” while on May 27, 2016, a similar New York Times story declared “Top CEO pay fell – yes, fell – in 2015.” Unfortunately, both the Journal and the Times mismeasured the actual take-home pay of each and every one of these CEOs in 2014 and 2015. The reason for this mismeasure is that both articles relied on “fair value” estimates of the stock-based pay of these CEOs as reported in the Summary Compensation Table of the definitive proxy statement (Form DEF 14A) that each publicly listed company files annually with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Yet the very same proxy statements also report the actual realized gains of these CEOs in the Option Exercises and Stock Vested Table. It is the realized gains on stock-based pay, not fair-value estimates, that enter into the total compensation that a CEO actually takes home and reports as income in his or her income-tax return. Moreover, including actual realized gains instead of estimated fair value of stock– based pay in the measure of total executive compensation can make a big difference. In 2014 average total compensation of the 500 highest-paid executives named on corporate proxy statements based on actual realized gains was $34.3 million, with 81 percent coming from stock-based pay. But average total compensation of the 500 highest paid based on estimated fair value was $19.3 million, with 62 percent attributable to stock- based pay. The excess of total actual realized-gains compensation over total estimated fair-value compensation was greatest in those years when the stock market was booming. Why would the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report estimates of executive pay when they could be reporting the CEOs’ actual pay? In this paper, we answer this question by explaining the origins of the “fair value” estimates of stock-based pay and how the obsession with these estimates by the SEC, relying on the business-run Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), has relegated to statistical obscurity executives’ readily available, accurate, and actual realized gains from stock-based pay. We use Standard & Poor’s ExecuComp database to document that a) stock-based pay, in the forms of realized gains from stock options and stock awards, dominates both the size of and the changes over time in the total compensation of the highest-paid senior executives; and b) the fair-value estimates of stock-based pay tend to understate, often substantially, the realized gains from stock-based pay that these executives actually receive. An irony is that even critics of excessive executive pay, most notably the AFL-CIO on its Executive Paywatch website, use the fair-value estimates when the actual CEO compensation numbers would reveal a much larger ratio of CEO pay to the earnings of the average worker. Indeed, as we discuss in the conclusion to this paper, as mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, this mismeasure of executive pay has become institutionalized in U.S. government policy in the SEC’s Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule, which beginning in 2017 requires every company to publish the ratio of CEO to median-worker pay. Under this rule, the SEC requires companies to use the fair-value measure of CEO pay. The Pay Ratio Disclosure Rule is supposed to provide the public with a company-level indicator of income inequality. Instead it will tend to underestimate inequality, substituting fictitious estimates for actual known amounts of income that CEOs put into their bank accounts and declare in their income-tax returns.
- Topic:
- Financial Crisis, Inequality, Income Inequality, Stock Markets, and Wage Growth
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
466. How Much Is That Star in the Window? Professorial Salaries and Research Performance in UK Universities
- Author:
- Gianni De Fraja, Giovanni Facchini, and John Gathergood
- Publication Date:
- 07-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP)
- Abstract:
- Using individual level data on the salary of all UK university professors, matched to results on the performance of academic departments from the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, we study the relationship between academic salaries and research performance. The UK higher education sector is particularly interesting because professorial salaries are unregulated and the outcome of the official research evaluation is a key financial concern of universities. To frame our analysis, we present a simple model of university pay determination, which shows that pay level and pay inequality in a department are positively related to performance. Our empirical results confirm these theoretical predictions; we also find that the pay-performance relationship is weaker for the more established and better paying universities. Our findings are also consistent with the idea that higher salaries have been used by departments to recruit academics more likely to improve their performance.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Inequality, Research, Higher Education, and Academia
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom
467. Africa’s Growth Dividend? Lived Poverty Drops Across Much of the Continent
- Author:
- Robert Mattes, Boniface Dulani, and E. Gyimah-Boadi
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afrobarometer
- Abstract:
- Though Africa has recorded high levels of economic growth over the past decade, previous Afrobarometer surveys of citizens found little evidence that this growth had reduced levels of poverty in any consistent way (Dulani, Mattes, & Logan, 2013). However, new data from Afrobarometer Round 6, collected across 35 African countries, suggest a very different picture. While “lived poverty” remains pervasive across much of the continent, especially in Central and West Africa, we now see evidence that the decade of economic growth seems to have finally delivered broad-based reductions in poverty. “Lived poverty” (an index that measures the frequency with which people experience shortages of basic necessities) retreated across a broad range of countries. In the roughly three-year period between Round 5 (2011/2013) and Round 6 (2014/2015) surveys, our data suggest that “lived poverty” fell in 22 of 33 countries surveyed in both rounds. However, these changes show no systematic relation to recent rates of economic growth. While growing economies are undoubtedly important, what appears to be more important in improving the lives of ordinary people is the extent to which national governments and their donor partners put in place the type of development infrastructure that enables people to build better lives.
- Topic:
- Poverty, Infrastructure, Inequality, and Economic Growth
- Political Geography:
- Africa
468. Understanding the Recent trend of Income Inequality in China
- Author:
- Juzhong Zhuang and Shi Li
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- This paper examines underlying factors that could explain the decline in income inequality in China since 2008 and inquires whether the decline indicates China‘s income inequality has peaked following the Kuznets hypothesis. The paper first identifies four key drivers of rising income inequality in China since the mid-1980: rising skill premium, declining share of labor income, increasing spatial inequality, and widening inequality in the distribution of wealth. It then provides evidence that the reversal of these drivers, with the exception of wealth inequality, could partly explains the decline in income inequality since 2008. The paper argues that since part of the reversal of these drivers is policy-induced, it is important that the policy actions continue for income inequality to decline further. The paper further argues that a critical factor underlying the Kuznets hypothesis is that taxation and transfers play a bigger role in income redistribution as a country becomes more developed, while their role is still limited in China, the future path of China‘s income inequality may not be one-directional, and may stay high before personal income tax plays a bigger role.
- Topic:
- Economics, Inequality, Income Inequality, and Tax Systems
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
469. Ethnic inequality and community activities in Indonesia
- Author:
- Christophe Muller
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- For the first time in Indonesia, we jointly analyse several economic statistics and ethnic diversity indicators at national and local levels. Nationally, we find very high levels of economic inequality, measured from household asset values or consumption expenditure. In contrast, the levels of ethnic diversity, while non-negligible, are much lower, whether they reflect fractionalization, polarization, or ethnic inequality based on individual living standards. All ethnic inequality indicators surged after the Asian economic crisis. Ethnic inequality based on education is much lower and decreasing. In panel data models, individual participation in community activities is found to be much determined by local patterns of ethnic diversity. Different dimensions of ethnic diversity generate distinct effects. Ethnic polarization stimulates participation in strategic activities. Instead, ethnic fragmentation and ethnic inequality depress most local activities. Finally, we provide tentative explanations of local ethnic inequality in regressions that show a mixed pattern of socioeconomic influences.
- Topic:
- Inequality, Ethnicity, Diversity, and Community
- Political Geography:
- Indonesia and Southeast Asia
470. Gender divide in agricultural productivity in Mozambique
- Author:
- João Morgado and Vincenzo Salvucci
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- In this study we analyze the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Mozambique applying the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition approach on data from four agricultural surveys between 2002 and 2012. We find that female-headed households are on average substantially less productive (about 20 per cent) than male-headed households, and that differences are more pronounced in the centre-north compared to the south. The gap persists even though female-headed households are disproportionally found in relatively smaller plots, and a pronounced inverse-size productivity relation exists. We could identify some of the most important drivers of this divide linked to differences in endowments. However, a larger proportion is accounted for by the structural part, potentially linked to technical efficiency, pure discrimination, or other unobservable characteristics.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Gender Issues, and Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Mozambique
471. Public Debt in an Unequal World
- Author:
- Sandy Brian Hager
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
- Abstract:
- Public debt levels have risen across the advanced capitalist world over the past four decades. Who exactly is purchasing these ever-growing piles of public debt? How do rising levels of public indebtedness relate to growing wealth and inequality? This paper presents some of my own findings, which indicate a rapid concentration in ownership of the US public debt since the early 1980s. Focusing on the Eurozone, the paper then goes on to discuss the difficulties in extending this type of research to other countries. The absence of reliable data on ownership of the public debt reinforces the need for a global registry that tracks the distribution of financial wealth.
- Topic:
- Debt, Capitalism, Inequality, Austerity, Public Debt, and Ownership
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
472. Breaking the Link Between Housing Cycles, Banking Crises, and Recession
- Author:
- Avinash Persaud
- Publication Date:
- 03-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
- Abstract:
- The housing market lies at the center of the biggest banking crises across the world. The recessions that follow these banking crises are generally deeper and longer than others. The collapse of housing prices amid rising unemployment is a major source of inequality. This working paper explains how the nexus between housing, banking, and the economy can be broken. It shows that two modest regulatory changes would result in life insurers and pension funds providing mortgage finance, which would better insulate the economy and homeowners from the housing cycle than financing from banks or markets can.
- Topic:
- Global Recession, Inequality, Economy, Housing, and Banking
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
473. Quantifying the Living Wage in Swaziland: A Case of the Handicraft Sector
- Author:
- Eswatini Economic Policy Analysis and Research Centre
- Publication Date:
- 11-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Eswatini Economic Policy Analysis and Research Centre (ESEPARC)
- Abstract:
- This study quantifies a living wage for rural and urban workers in the handicraft sector in Swaziland. It also compares the resultant living wage in between the two geographical areas. The study is interested in ascertaining the living wage in the handicraft sector because (1) the sector provides jobs to a significant proportion in the rural sector, and (2) paying decent salaries through the living wage has emerged as part of the solution to make rural jobs bankable and alter the employment landscape. The study finds that the estimated monthly living wage in Swaziland ranges from E1,241.66 to E6,839.96 and E2,345 to E8,208.71 for rural and urban handicraft workers, respectively. Currently, up to 70.9% of all employees are remunerated less than E2,000 which is 35% lower than the estimated living wage of E3,076.29 for a rural worker with a household size of three or 61.2% lower than the estimated living wage of E5,148.69 for an urban worker with a similar household size. Given these discrepancies, the study proposes E3,076.29 as the appropriate living wage for both rural and urban workers in Swaziland. It is recommended that measures and guidelines to enforce and strengthen the implementation of the estimated living wage amongst all regulated handicraft enterprises in Swaziland be developed. Handicraft enterprises are encouraged to consider gradually introducing the urban living wage over time.
- Topic:
- Labor Issues, Inequality, Urban, Rural, and Wages
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Eswatini
474. Extreme Carbon Inequality: Why the Paris climate deal must put the poorest, lowest emitting and most vulnerable people first
- Author:
- Timothy Gore
- Publication Date:
- 12-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Abstract:
- Climate change is inextricably linked to economic inequality: it is a crisis that is driven by the greenhouse gas emissions of the ‘haves’ that hits the ‘have-nots’ the hardest. While COP21 in Paris will see a deal negotiated between governments on the basis of the total emissions produced in their territories, the real winners and losers will be their citizens. The true test of the deal will be whether it delivers something for the poorest people who are both the least responsible for and the most vulnerable to climate change, wherever they live. In this briefing Oxfam presents new data analysis that demonstrates the extent of global carbon inequality by estimating and comparing the lifestyle consumption emissions of rich and poor citizens in different countries. See also the technical briefing on the methodology and the data sets.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Politics, Poverty, and Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
475. Game-Changers in the Paris Climate Deal: What is needed to ensure a new agreement helps those on the front lines of climate change
- Author:
- Tracy Carty
- Publication Date:
- 11-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- There is likely to be a climate deal in Paris. The emission pledges that more than 150 governments have put on the table this year show that global climate ambition is increasing. But much more is needed, as it’s a deal that could still lead to around 3°C of warming. New Oxfam-commissioned research estimates that compared with 2°C, developing countries could be faced with an additional $600bn per year in economic losses by 2050, and see their adaptation finance needs raised by almost $300bn per year by the same date. But there is still scope for a stronger deal. In this media briefing Oxfam looks at potential game-changers on finance and mitigation ambition that could avert these costs for the world’s poorest people. These are the issues that will determine whether the Paris deal reflects the power of the biggest fossil fuel emitters and elites, or is a turning point which starts to address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Energy Policy, Politics, Reform, Inequality, and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
476. ECOWAP: A Fragmented Policy. Development partners and regional institutions should address leadership and coordination issues in order to build a common agricultural policy for West Africa
- Author:
- Tracy Carty
- Publication Date:
- 11-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Abstract:
- There is likely to be a climate deal in Paris. The emission pledges that more than 150 governments have put on the table this year show that global climate ambition is increasing. But much more is needed, as it’s a deal that could still lead to around 3°C of warming. New Oxfam-commissioned research estimates that compared with 2°C, developing countries could be faced with an additional $600bn per year in economic losses by 2050, and see their adaptation finance needs raised by almost $300bn per year by the same date. But there is still scope for a stronger deal. In this media briefing Oxfam looks at potential game-changers on finance and mitigation ambition that could avert these costs for the world’s poorest people. These are the issues that will determine whether the Paris deal reflects the power of the biggest fossil fuel emitters and elites, or is a turning point which starts to address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Energy Policy, Inequality, and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
477. A Different Route: Reimagining the idea of prosperity in Asia
- Author:
- Maria Dolores Bernabe and Erinch Sahan
- Publication Date:
- 11-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Abstract:
- Asia is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies. Yet millions of people remain poor, while a handful gets richer and richer. Asia needs a development model that leaves no one behind: not the workers and farmers, who act as the driving force behind Asia’s growth – and certainly not the women, who take on the lowest paying jobs in the region. This model must also consider constraints, particularly the earth’s finite natural resources which future generations need to survive. It must move away from carbon dependence and must anticipate and plan for the impacts of climate change. These principles together inform inclusive and sustainable development, which Asian governments can use as a roadmap to transform their societies in an era of vanishing resources and staggering inequalities.
- Topic:
- Development, Energy Policy, Poverty, Natural Resources, and Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Asia
478. Tool 8: Integrating Gender in Security Sector Reform and Governance (Toolkit for Security Sector Reform and Governance in West Africa)
- Author:
- Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, Alex Sivalie Mbayo, and Rosaline Mcarthy
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
- Abstract:
- Gender equality is an international norm that stipulates the equal right of women, men and gender minorities to access opportunities and resources, regardless of the sex with which they were born and the gender with which they identify. In the context of the security sector, this means that women and men should have equal opportunities to participate in the provision, management and oversight of security services, and that the security needs of women, men, boys and girls should be equally considered and effectively responded to. While ECOWAS recommends that the specific security and justice needs of men and women, boys and girls are fully integrated into all reform processes and governance mechanisms applicable to the security sector, the transition from theory to practice often proves challenging. Tool 8 of the Toolkit for Security Sector Reform and Governance in West Africa is designed to provide practitioners with action-oriented guidance for tackling this challenge. It may be most useful to national actors involved in the governance of security institutions and to those who partake in democratic oversight. This Tool aims to facilitate the identification of effective entry points for integrating the aims of gender equality in national legislation, strategies and budgets for security; in the management of security institutions; in the delivery of justice and security services and in national defence; as well as at all stages of internal and external oversight of the security sector.
- Topic:
- Security, Gender Issues, Human Rights, Women, Inequality, and LGBT+
- Political Geography:
- Geneva, Africa, United Nations, Liberia, West Africa, and Sierra Leone
479. Issues of Under-Representation: Mapping Women in Indian Politics
- Author:
- David Lal, Abhiruchi Ojha, and Nidhi Sadana Sabharwal
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- South Asian Studies
- Institution:
- Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
- Abstract:
- This article highlights the perpetual under-representation of women in Indian parliament. As the recently held 14th General elections in India situated a stable government at the centre, however, it still has lesser women representatives. The election commission reports from 1957 to the recently held general elections in 2014 highlights emancipation of women from mere absent electorate to active voters. Further, the data also underlines a shift from mere active voters to vibrant candidates, as the number of women candidates is increased manifold. Despite these positive shift from becoming ‘active voters’ and ‘vibrant candidates’, women are unable to capitalise the increase in number of candidates to members of parliament. Undoubtedly, the traditionally placed patriarchical society in India is still unwelcoming when it comes to elect women as the political representatives. Apart from patriarchy as the important reason other various political and nonpolitical reasons is also responsible for this democratic deficit. The substantial representation of women is missing in proportion to their population. While we celebrate the vibrancy of Indian democracy, the issue of under-representation of women continue to be a major challenge for Indian democracy.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Politics, Elections, Women, Inequality, and Representation
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
480. Female Political Participation in South Asia: a Case Study of Pakistan
- Author:
- Arfan Latif, Ahmed Usman, Jafar Riaz Kataria, and Muhammad Abdullah
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- South Asian Studies
- Institution:
- Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
- Abstract:
- The objective of the current study is to find out the male’s perception about female political participation. Prior researchers in this area were mostly quantitative hence the current study is a qualitative study to get an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon. This study used purposive sampling technique and the findings of the study are based on 20 in-depth interviews and 2 focus group discussions. The study concluded that religious, economic and patriarchal mind-set is the main factors that hinder women in the field of politics. The findings of the current study can be effectively used to make women participate in a more productive way by increasing the awareness at the grass root level and by making appropriate policies and the national level.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Politics, Women, and Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, South Asia, and Punjab
481. Exclusion, Informality, and Predation in the Cities of Delhi
- Author:
- Cities of Delhi Team
- Publication Date:
- 08-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Policy Research, India
- Abstract:
- Delhi is India’s richest city and as the capital of the nation has long enjoyed favourable treatment from the Centre. As the home to the country’s national bureaucracies, it also benefits from a large base of secure, well-paid, government jobs. Over the last decade the city has grown at an average real rate of 10 percent, and has benefitted from a dramatic increase in large-scale infrastructure development. Yet, despite these advantages, Delhi is a deeply divided city marked by layers of social exclusion. In the modern imaginary, the city represents the promise of freedom and opportunity. It marks a social space that is less constrained by traditional identities and one in which greater social interaction and density support economic dynamism. If development must, as Amartya Sen has so influentially argued, be based on strengthening basic capabilities, then the city can surely be a privileged site of capability-enhancement. Indeed, the migrants who flood the city often come in search of better livelihoods, education, health, and basic services. But as any resident of Delhi knows, the quality of such services varies dramatically across neighbourhoods, and the part of the city one lives in significantly impacts one’s ability to take full advantage of what the city has to offer. The Cities of Delhi (CoD) project starts with the simple recognition that India’s capital is marked by different settlement types, defined by diverse degrees of formality, legality, and tenure, which taken together produce a highly differentiated pattern of access to basic services. This report provides an overview of the findings from CoD. It builds directly on the place, process, and institution reports available at citiesofdelhi.cprindia.org, but in no way substitutes for these reports, all of which stand on their own as original empirical contributions. This overview is instead a synthesis, an effort to tie together the findings from the reports, to paint a broad picture of patterns of unequal access to basic services in the city and to provide an analysis of how these patterns of inequality are linked to structures and practices of governance.
- Topic:
- Development, Urbanization, Inequality, Economy, and Capital Flows
- Political Geography:
- South Asia, India, and Asia
482. YOUTH AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL INEQUALITY: THE CASE OF ARGENTINA 2004-2014 IN THE LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
- Author:
- Analia Calero
- Publication Date:
- 12-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
- Abstract:
- The main objective of this paper is to make a first exploration of inequalities experienced by youth within them and bewteen other age groups, from a multidimensional perspective. Taking the case of Argentina for the period 2004-2014, the following topics are explored individually: employment, wages, education, access and use of new information technologies , health and time use.
- Topic:
- Health, Science and Technology, Employment, Inequality, and Youth
- Political Geography:
- Argentina, South America, and Buenos Aires
483. What a Real Liberal Foreign Policy Would Look Like
- Author:
- Jeffrey Lewis
- Publication Date:
- 06-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
- Abstract:
- Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz, and Martin Heinrich — three Democratic members of Congress — have written an essay in Foreign Affairs titled, “Principles for a Progressive Foreign Policy.” It is, of course, predictably, terrible. My colleagues are already forming up. Being a good progressive, I can’t resist embroiling myself in the coming silliness. What really bothers me about the essay is that, despite the title, there are no “principles” to be found anywhere in the text. Just some well-worn clichés (a “new Marshall Plan”) and anodyne recommendations (consult with allies). The essay does not offer a principle that might distinguish those of us on the left from our friends on the right or a principle that might link our domestic and foreign policies. That’s a pretty important thing if we hope that future Democratic administrations will be able to articulate a strategy that amounts to more than “Don’t do stupid shit.” As it happens, I believe there are such principles — or at least there are for lapsed philosophers like me. My very American strand of liberalism — and I prefer the phrase “liberalism” to “progressivism,” given my choice in philosophers — is defined by the work of the late John Rawls. He argued that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, and his works, A Theory of Justice and “Justice as Fairness,” made arguments about what a just society should look like. One particular principle stands out. After articulating the importance of certain liberties that could not be compromised and the importance of equality of opportunity, Rawls asked how society should view inequality.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Inequality, Leadership, and Liberalism
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
484. Inequality, Debt Servicing, and the Sustainability of Steady State Growth
- Author:
- Mark Setterfield, Yun K. Kim, and Jeremy Rees
- Publication Date:
- 11-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- We investigate the claim that the way in which debtor households service their debts matters for macroeconomic performance. A Kaleckian growth model is modified to incorporate working households who borrow to finance consumption that is determined, in part, by the desire to emulate the consumption patterns of more affluent households. The impact of this behavior on the sustainability of the growth process is then studied by means of a numerical analysis that captures various dimensions of income inequality. When compared to previous contributions to the literature, our results show that the way in which debtor households service their debt has both quantitative and qualitative effects on the economy’s macrodynamics.
- Topic:
- Debt, Inequality, Islamic State, Economic Theory, and Sustainability
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
485. Did Quantitative Easing Increase Income Inequality?
- Author:
- Juan Montecino and Gerald Epstein
- Publication Date:
- 10-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- The impact of the post-meltdown Federal Reserve policy of ultra-low interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) on income and wealth inequality has become an important policy and political issue. Critics have argued that by raising asset prices, near-zero interest rates and QE have significantly contributed to increases in inequality, while practitioners of central banking, counter that the distributional impact have probably been either neutral or even egalitarian in nature due to its employment impacts. Yet there has been little academic research that addresses empirically this important question. We use data from the Federal Reserve’s Tri-Annual Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and look at the evolution of income by quintile between the “Pre- QE period” and the “QE period” analyzing three key impact channels of QE policy on income distribution: 1) the employment channel 2) the asset appreciation and return channel, and 3) the mortgage refinancing channel. Using recentered influence function (RIF) regressions pioneered by Firpo et. al (2007) in conjunction with the well-known Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique, we find that while employment changes and mortgage refinancing were equalizing, these impacts were nonetheless swamped by the large dis-equalizing effects of equity price appreciations. Reductions in returns to short term assets added further to dis-equalizing processes between the periods. Bond price appreciations, surprisingly, had little distributional impact. We cannot know precisely how much of these changes are due to QE as opposed to other influences, but to assess potential causal effects we utilize a counter-factual exercise to assess the quantitative range of impacts of QE on the main channels. We conclude that, most likely, QE was modestly dis-equalizing, despite having some positive impacts on employment and mortgage refinancing. The modestly dis-equalizing impacts were due to both policy choices and deep seated structural problems, such as the long-term deterioration in labor market opportunities for many workers due to globalization and legal and political reductions in labor bargaining power that have contributed to long term wage stagnation. Finally, there is no support in our analysis, for the proposition that raising interest rates would be an efficient mechanism for improving income distribution, because of the likely costs in terms of employment and debt refinancing opportunities.
- Topic:
- Federal Reserve, Inequality, Income Inequality, Fiscal Policy, and Wage Growth
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
486. Wealth Concentration, Income Distribution, and Alternatives for the USA
- Author:
- Lance Taylor, Özlem Ömer, and Armon Rezai
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- US household wealth concentration is not likely to decline in response to fiscal interventions alone. Creation of an independent public wealth fund could lead to greater equality. Similarly, once-off tax/transfer packages or wage increases will not reduce income inequality significantly; on-going wage increases in excess of productivity growth would be needed. These results come from the accounting in a simulation model based on national income and financial data. The theory behind the model borrows from ideas that originated in Cambridge UK (especially from Luigi Pasinetti and Richard Goodwin).
- Topic:
- Inequality, Income Inequality, Tax Systems, Redistribution, and Wealth
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
487. Wealth Concentration, Income Distribution, and Alternatives for the USA
- Author:
- Lance Taylor, Özlem Ömer, and Armon Rezai
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- US household wealth concentration is not likely to decline in response to fiscal interventions alone. Creation of an independent public wealth fund could lead to greater equality. Similarly, once-off tax/transfer packages or wage increases will not reduce income inequality significantly; on-going wage increases in excess of productivity growth would be needed. These results come from the accounting in a simulation model based on national income and financial data. The theory behind the model borrows from ideas that originated in Cambridge UK (especially from Luigi Pasinetti and Richard Goodwin).
- Topic:
- Inequality, Income Inequality, Tax Systems, Redistribution, and Wealth
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
488. Global Crises, Equalizing and Dis-equalizing Capitalist Regimes: The Case of 20th Century Asian Political Economy
- Author:
- Vamsi Vakulabharanam
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- The logic of deep global capitalist crises needs to be incorporated centrally into an understanding of the changes in the within-country inequality levels. I present a theoretical framework that incorporates two levels of political economic processes. First, global capitalist crises lead to the creation of an institutional structure or a regime in the capitalist centers that influences inequality in these core countries and in the periphery. Second the class configuration in the non-core countries - a set of institutional arrangements that can be termed local political economy - also plays a key role in determining inequality outcomes. The main argument of this short note is that these two sets of processes interact to produce patterns of within country-inequality that we observe across the world. In the Asian case, high growth was accompanied by declining inequality for a period of three decades after World War 2. However, with the crisis of global capitalism during the 1970s, a new regime was created in the global center that pushed inequalities higher across the world. These changes occurred through the implementation of policy structures that have disproportionately favored urban elites. In the Asian economies too, growth was accompanied by rising inequality after the 1980s. I use these experiences to argue that growth episodes in capitalism that follow effective demand crises (such as the Great Depression) seem to allow for lower within-country inequality. Growth episodes that follow profitability crises by contrast tend to cause increases in the within-country inequality. However, this is not a deterministic frame of analysis, as the recent experience of most countries with austerity policies suggests, even if this recent experience might well be a passing phase.
- Topic:
- Political Economy, Capitalism, Inequality, Finance, and Crisis Management
- Political Geography:
- Asia
489. Social Interaction Models and Keynes’ Macroeconomics
- Author:
- Duncan Foley
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- The central concepts of Keynes’ macroeconomic theories concerning the behavior of labor markets, aggregate demand, and asset pricing can be formulated as special cases of a general social interaction model. In its simplest form this model analyzes a system of interacting identical agents, each of whom controls the level of an action, and all of whom have the same utility functions trading off the effort required by the action with the monetary incentives for it. When the incentives include an interaction term involving the action levels of the other agents, the equilibrium outcome is in general Pareto-inefficient for the interacting agents, and multiple equilibria are possible. The expectations that lie at the heart of Keynes’ conception of macroeconomic equilibrium concern the behavior of other individuals rather than concrete forecasts of the concrete path of prices.
- Topic:
- Economics, Inequality, Microeconomics, Keynes, and Behavior
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
490. Two Paths to War: The Origins of the First World War versus the Dynamics of Contemporary Sino-American Confrontations
- Author:
- James Kurth
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- During the past year, there have been numerous and somber reflections, rather like those during a traditional period of mourning, about the great and tragic events that occurred just 100 years ago – the beginning of the First World War. And in the course of these melancholy reflections about the past, there naturally have arisen anxious concerns about the future. Is it possible that we may once again be entering into an era of great conflicts, or even of a great war, between the great powers of the time? Are there important and ominous similarities between the international situation before the First World War and the international situation of today?
- Topic:
- Development, Government, Politics, History, and Inequality
- Political Geography:
- China and United States of America
491. Information and Economics: A New Way to Think About Expectations and to Improve Economic Prediction.
- Author:
- David Tuckett, Paul Ormerod, Rickard Nyman, and Robert Elliot Smith
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- The largely unexpected arrival of the global economic crisis and the largely unpredicted slowness of the recovery from the Great Recession should be precipitating an intellectual crisis across economics and policy making. We require additional theories and additional methods to detect how an economy is evolving and to provide the basis for policy intervention (Haldane, 2014).
- Topic:
- Economics, Inequality, Microeconomics, and Behavior
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
492. Twisting the economic tale: what literature can do that political economy can’t
- Author:
- Sara Thornton
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- This paper will address the problem of how we might gain economic understanding from literature. It will look at the aesthetic form of literature as being an efficient vehicle for economic thinking.
- Topic:
- Economics, Political Economy, Culture, Inequality, History, and Literature
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
493. Capital Flight from Africa and Development Inequality: Domestic and Global Dimensions
- Author:
- Léonce Ndikumana
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- Over the past decades African economies have exhibited two stunning paradoxes: growth acceleration coexisting with stubbornly high poverty rates; increasing capital flight along with widening development financing gaps. There has been no attempt to link the two in the literature. This paper attempts to fill the gap; it suggests that the implications of capital flight for the inequality-growth-poverty nexus may be the key. Specifically, the paper proposes to shift attention to conceptual and empirical analysis of the implications of capital flight for inequality along income lines and inequality in development both within African countries and between Africa and advanced economies. The evidence presented in the paper indicates that Africa may be more unequal along human development dimensions than along income, and points to the possibility that capital flight may be one of the factors behind the observed limited poverty reduction gains from growth and persistent development gap between African countries and advanced economies.
- Topic:
- Development, Government, Politics, History, Economies, Inequality, Finance, Microeconomics, Capital Flight, and Trade
- Political Geography:
- Africa
494. The Prince('s) Rules: Economic Theories and Political Struggle in Europe
- Author:
- Orsola Costantini
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- The Cyclically Adjusted Budget (CAB) is the estimated size of the public budget at some previously defined level of output which may represent the ‘normal’ output or a policy target and that usually is considered to be unaffected by business fluctuations or cycles. Such an estimate is supposed to isolate the automatic movements of revenues and expenditures, given the current structure of tax and transfers, from discretionary fiscal interventions and indicate the “impact” and sustainability of fiscal action. But this definition hardly does justice to the long and contentious history of this fateful estimate, which has been differently named, interpreted and calculated over the years and played a crucial role in many of the most important controversies in macroeconomics and public policy. This paper traces the evolution of the concept through time, tying it to the history of economic thought as well as economic history and policymaking. The reconstruction illustrates the important role the distribution of power plays in the evolution of economic theory and policy as the historical forms of the state-market relationship evolve. Here, however, we will focus mainly on the case of the European Union and Eurozone.
- Topic:
- Government, Politics, Science and Technology, History, Inequality, and Innovation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
495. Social investment for inclusive growth: a Southern European perspective
- Author:
- Annamaria Simonazzi
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- Inequality has emerged as a major economic issue: sharp increases in the share of income going to those at the very top of the income distribution, a rising share of income going to profits, stagnant real wages, and a fall in median family income have raised concern over the sustainability of our economies and societies.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Inequality, Investment, Innovation, and Social Investment
- Political Geography:
- Southern Europe
496. Towards a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Framework
- Author:
- Richard A. Conn Jr.
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- Initiatives to improve sovereign debt restructuring (“SDR”) began long before recent Argentine bond decisions but were redoubled in the aftermath of these rulings. At first glance, these cases identify problematic contract language that could be rectified by re-drafting critical boilerplate provisions such as the pari passu and collective action clauses (“CAC”). But given the effects of disorder, costs and delays in restructuring foreign sovereign debt upon debtor countries, creditors, and the bond market itself, it is understandable that some are uncomfortable leaving such matters solely in the hands of private parties to contracts without a framework that assists in minimizing damage to contracting and non-contracting parties alike. The creation of an agreed upon framework that facilitates the interaction among private and public parties is a good alternative to the status quo if this approach can provide greater stability and efficiency in the restructuring process while allowing for sufficient flexibility and certainty (traditional benefits of the iterative development of contract language) for market participants. There are a broad variety of options to consider and analyses to be performed, particularly relating to political feasibility, before proposing a framework. As discussed herein, given the historic context of SDR, a framework that focuses upon consensual procedures seems to be a logical starting point since it could add value to the restructuring process without treading on the political terrain of sovereigns.
- Topic:
- Government, Politics, History, Inequality, Finance, and Sovereign Debt
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
497. Gordian knot: A panoramic perspective on stemming illicit financial flows from Africa
- Author:
- Melvin Ayogu
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- Pushing this strand of research brings a certain feeling of trepidation. It comes from recognizing that by openly elaborating on how to catch or deter a criminal, you thereby confer an undue advantage on the criminal through forewarning. Obtaining a head start in the race to prevail, they (criminals) are able to consider and possibly devise an effective circumvention strategy. But if the criminal must not see it coming then, what aspects of how to stop a thief shall we and shall we not reveal or discuss openly amongst all? There are no easy answers to the conundrum. For instance, one has to consider the signaling value of openly engaging in discussions on how to stop criminal activities and then, balance that benefit against the paradox of empowerment. The balancing act is important because some aspects of the preventive remedies can unintentionally enable the very thing which society is striving to prevent.
- Topic:
- Development, Government, Politics, History, Inequality, Finance, Microeconomics, and Trade
- Political Geography:
- Africa
498. Severing the Innovation-Inequality Link: Distribution Sensitive Science, Technology and Innovation Policies in Developed Nations
- Author:
- Amos Zehavi and Dan Breznitz
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- Innovation is essential to economic growth. However, it appears that the ways in which we pursue innovation policies have aggravated inequality. Inequality is an increasingly contentious political issue in both wealthy and emerging economies. Yet, it is becoming clear that use of traditional state instruments to alleviate inequality by redistributive means, is no longer sufficient. For those reasons, in this paper we consider other state instruments that are rarely associated with distributive goals. Specifically, we inquire whether we can successfully devise and employ Distributive-Sensitive Science and Technology and Innovation Policies focused on disadvantaged groups of users and consumers of technology. Following an exploratory theoretical approach, the paper first develop four types of such programs, and then utilize a comparative approach to analyze existing programs that fit into these categories, first, in Israel, and then, in the United State, Germany, and Sweden. We conclude by arguing that although these programs are currently driven primarily by economic efficiency concerns and not by distributive ones, they show the promise of our approach of utilizing innovation policy to reach social policy goals.
- Topic:
- Development, Environment, Science and Technology, Inequality, Economic Growth, and Innovation
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Germany, Sweden, and United States of America
499. Leveraging the network: a stress-test framework based on DebtRank
- Author:
- Stefano Battiston, Guido Caldarelli, Marco D'Errico, and Stefano Gurciullo
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- We develop a novel stress-test framework to monitor systemic risk in financial systems. The modular structure of the framework allows to accommodate for a variety of shock scenarios, methods to estimate interbank exposures and mechanisms of distress propagation. The main features are as follows. First, estimate and disentangle not only first-round effects(i.e. shock on external assets) and second-round effects (i.e. distress induced in the interbank network), but also a third-round effect induced by possible fire sales. Second, monitor at the same time the impact of shocks on individual or groups of financial institutions as well as their vulnerability to shocks on counterparties or certain asset classes. Third, estimate loss distributions, thus combining network effects with familiar risk measures such as VaR and CVaR. Fourth, in order to do robustness analyses and cope with incomplete data, generate sets of networks of interbank exposures coherent with the total lending and borrowing of each bank. As an illustration, we carry out a stress–test exercise on a dataset of listed European banks over the years 2008-2013. We find that second-round and third-round effects dominate first-round effects, therefore suggesting that most current stress-test frameworks might lead to a severe underestimation of systemic risk.
- Topic:
- Debt, Science and Technology, Inequality, Finance, and Innovation
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
500. Pseudo-wealth Fluctuations and Aggregate Demand Effects
- Author:
- Martin Guzman and Joseph E. Stiglitz
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- This paper presents a theory of pseudo-wealth in a model that displays aggregate demand externalities. With heterogeneous beliefs and a market for exploiting those differences in beliefs, pseudo-wealth will be created–i.e. the sum of expected wealth of all the individuals will be larger than what it is feasible for the society. Under some conditions, those perceptions will lead to larger levels of consumption of (tradable and non-tradable) goods, leisure, and borrowing than in a world with common beliefs. If those differences in beliefs disappear, pseudo-wealth will disappear, leading to adjustments in behavior that amplify the initial decrease in expected wealth. That is, we provide a simple general equilibrium model in which the destruction of pseudo-wealth amplifies the effects of the initial disturbance, leading to large decreases in economic activity. Importantly, this downturn is not associated with any change in the state variables that describe the economy. More generally, the paper shows that completing markets (in this case by creating a market for bets) may imply lower output both in the present and in the future, raising unsettling questions on criteria for welfare analysis.
- Topic:
- Markets, Inequality, Finance, Macroeconomics, Welfare, and Wealth
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus