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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2006‒05‒06
seven papers chosen by |
| By: | Jakob Roland Munch; Michael Rosholm; Michael Svarer (Department of Economics, University of Aarhus, Denmark) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impact of home ownership on individual job mobility and wages in Denmark. We find that home ownership has a negative impact on job-to-job mobility both in terms of transition into new local jobs and new jobs outside the local labour market. In addition, there is a clear negative effect of home ownership on the unemployment risk and a positive impact on wages. These results are robust to different strategies for correcting for the possible endogeneity of the home owner variable. |
| Keywords: | Home ownership, job mobility, duration model |
| JEL: | J6 R2 |
| Date: | 2006–05–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aah:aarhec:2006-06&r=ltv |
| By: | Benno Torgler; Neven T. Valev |
| Abstract: | In recent years the topics of illegal activities such as corruption or tax evasion have attracted a great deal of attention. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of compliance. The aim of this paper is to investigate empirically whether women are more willing to be compliant than men and whether we observe (among women and in general) differences in attitudes among similar age groups in different time periods (cohort effect) or changing attitudes of the same cohorts over time (age effect) using data from eight Western European countries from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey that span the period from 1981 to 1999. The results reveal higher willingness to comply among women and an age rather than a cohort effect. |
| Keywords: | corruption; bribe; social norms; tax compliance; gender effect; age effect; cohort effect |
| JEL: | H10 J16 K42 |
| Date: | 2006–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cra:wpaper:2006-15&r=ltv |
| By: | Dilip Mookherjee (Institute for Economic Development, Boston University); Debraj Ray (Department of Economics, New York University) |
| Abstract: | When human capital accumulation generates pecuniary externalities across professions, and capital markets are imperfect, persistent inequality in utility and consumption is inevitable in any steady state. This is true irrespective of the degree of divisibility in investments. However, divisibility (or fineness of occupational structure) has implications for both the multiplicity and Pareto-efficiency of steady states. Indivisibilities generate a continuum of inefficient and efficient steady states with varying per capita income On the other hand, perfect divisibility typically implies the existence of a unique steady state distribution which is Pareto-efficient. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bos:iedwpr:dp-108&r=ltv |
| By: | Dilip Mookherjee (Institute for Economic Development, Boston University); Debraj Ray |
| Keywords: | inequallity dynamics, bequests, imperfect capital markets, human capital |
| JEL: | D31 D63 O12 O15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bos:iedwpr:dp-121&r=ltv |
| By: | Leonardo Gasparini; Mariana Marchionni (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata; Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata); Federico H. Gutierrez (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses microeconometric simulations to characterize the distributional changes occurred in the Bolivian economy in the period 1993-2002, and to assess the potential distributional impact of various alternative economic scenarios for the next decade. Wage equations for urban and rural areas estimated by both OLS and quantile regression are the main inputs for the microsimulations. A sizeable increase in the dispersion in worker unobserved wage determinants is the main factor behind the significant increase in household income inequality in the 90s. The results of the microsimulations suggest a small poverty-reducing effect of several potential scenarios, including education upgrading, sectoral transformations, labor informality reduction, gender and race wage gap closing, and changes in the structure of the returns to education. Sustainable and vigorous productivity growth seems to be a necessary condition for Bolivia to meet the poverty Millennium Development Goal by 2015. |
| Keywords: | distribution, Bolivia, wages, decompositions, quantile, education, MDG |
| JEL: | C15 D31 I21 J23 J31 |
| Date: | 2004–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0012&r=ltv |
| By: | Leonardo Gasparini (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata); Walter Sosa Escudero |
| Abstract: | Most income studies do not take into account the implicit rent obtained by households who inhabit their own dwellings, a fact that introduces a potentially relevant bias in inequality, poverty, and welfare measures. In this paper we estimate these implicit rents for the Greater Buenos Aires area from information of Argentina’s National Household Expenditures Survey (ENGH) of 1996/7. Based on a sample of households that rent their dwellings, quantile regressions are used to estimate observed rents from a hedonic model. Estimated coefficients are applied to households that do not rent their houses or apartments in order to predict the implicit rent derived from living in an owned house. Estimated implicit rents are added to the standard notion of household income and various inequality measures are reestimated. We find that the consideration of these implicit rents reduces inequality due to an income elasticity of spending in housing less than one, and to the relatively large proportion of house owners in the lower strata of the income distribution. |
| Keywords: | implicit rent, hedonic prices, quantile regression, housing, income distribution. |
| JEL: | D31 R21 |
| Date: | 2004–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0014&r=ltv |
| By: | Leonardo Gasparini (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata); Federico Gutiérrez (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata); Leopoldo Tornarolli (Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS) - Universidad Nacional de La Plata) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides evidence on growth and income poverty in Latin American and the Caribbean. Results are obtained by processing microdata from household surveys of 18 LAC countries covering the 1990s and early 2000s. Over this period the LAC economies have experienced very heterogeneous patterns of growth and poverty changes. Most countries in the region have had a rather meager performance in terms of poverty reduction. Episodes of positive, significant and unambiguously pro-poor income growth have been rare in Latin America in the last 15 years. |
| Keywords: | poverty, growth, inequality, pro-poor growth, Latin America. |
| Date: | 2005–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0030&r=ltv |