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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2016‒06‒18
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Francesconi, Marco (University of Essex); Heckman, James J. (University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces the EJ Symposium on Child Development by reviewing the literature and placing the contributions of the papers in the Symposium in the context of a vibrant literature. |
| Keywords: | child development, education, dynamic complementarity |
| JEL: | H43 I21 I24 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9977&r=ltv |
| By: | Aronsson, Thomas (Department of Economics); Johansson-Stenman, Olof (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Sjögren, Tomas (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Almost all previous studies on optimal taxation and status consumption are based on closed model-economies. This paper analyzes how international capital mobility – which may constrain the use of capital income taxation – affects the optimal redistributive income tax policy in a small open economy when consumers care about their relative consumption. If the government can perfectly observe (and tax) returns on savings abroad, it is shown that the policy rules for marginal labor and capital income taxation derived for a closed economy largely carry over to the small open economy analyzed here. However, if these returns are unobserved by the government, the marginal tax policy rules will be very different from those pertaining to closed model-economies. In this case, capital income taxes on domestic savings will be completely ineffective, since such taxes would induce the consumers to move their savings abroad. The labor income tax must then indirectly also reflect the corrective purpose that the absent capital income tax would otherwise have had. |
| Keywords: | Optimal taxation; relative consumption; positional goods; capital mobility; small open economy |
| JEL: | D03 D60 D62 F21 H21 H23 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0658&r=ltv |
| By: | Daniel Borowczyk-Martins (Département d'économie); Etienne Lalé (Department of Economics (University of Bristol)) |
| Abstract: | Employed individuals in the U.S. are increasingly more likely to work part-time involuntarily than to be unemployed. Spells of involuntary part-time work are different from unemployment spells: a full-time worker who takes on a part-time job suffers an earnings loss while remaining employed, and is unlikely to receive income compensation from publicly-provided insurance programs.We analyze these differences through the lens of an incomplete-market, job-search model featuring unemployment risk alongside an additional risk of involuntary part-time employment.A calibration of the model consistent with U.S. institutions and labor-market dynamics shows that involuntary part-time work generates lower welfare losses relative to unemployment. This finding relies critically on the much higher probability to return to full-time employment from part-time work. We interpret it as a premium in access to full-time work faced by involuntary part-time workers, and use our model to tabulate its value in consumption-equivalent units. |
| Keywords: | Involuntary part-time work; Unemployment; Welfare |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/4f4eu80n0h8r28g6dadlk02mtb&r=ltv |
| By: | Paula Rodríguez-Modroño (Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Mauricio Matus López (Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Lina Gálvez-Muñoz (Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide) |
| Abstract: | The 20th century has witnessed an increase in the female participation force in Western countries, especially since 1940s. Explanations behind the more intensive use of female labour are of different nature: globalization forces, the relative female/male wage linked to an increase in education and productivity, the tertiarization of the economy, and other institutional and cultural factors that allow women to control fertility, invest in assets other than the family ones and alter female bargaining power. Since these phenomena are complex and might respond to specific reasons and timing in different countries, it is important to advance on country case studies in a comparative basis. While in other Western countries the increase in female labor participation started to be significant in the 1960s and 1970s, Spanish female activity rates started to rise dramatically in the 1980s, concurrently with the deep integration of Spain in international markets, especially through the entry in the European Union in 1986. In this paper, we will analyze the reasons behind the decalage in female labor force participation in Spain after WWII in comparison with other Western countries, and the subsequent catching up from the 1980s in order to determine the level of influence of Spanish integration in international markets, as well as other economic, institutional and cultural factors. |
| Keywords: | female labor force, globalization, gender analysis, inequality |
| JEL: | F66 J1 J2 N14 N34 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wphaei:16.02&r=ltv |