nep-pke New Economics Papers
on Post Keynesian Economics
Issue of 2022‒07‒25
four papers chosen by
Karl Petrick
Western New England University

  1. Macroeconomic Determinants of South Africa's Post-Apartheid Income Distribution By Adam Aboobaker
  2. Just transitions: A review of how to decarbonise energy systems while addressing poverty and inequality reduction By Malerba, Daniele
  3. Biophilic Markets By Beinhocker, Eric
  4. Unveiling the Cosmic Race: Racial Inequalities in Latin America * By Luis Guillermo Woo-Mora

  1. By: Adam Aboobaker (UMass Amherst - University of Massachusetts [Amherst] - UMASS - University of Massachusetts System, WITS - University of the Witwatersrand [Johannesburg])
    Abstract: South Africa's distributive regime is striking to all who observe it. This paper situates developments in post-apartheid income distribution within key macroeconomic developments and debates, arguing that deterioration in the wage share between 2000 and 2008 is better explained by factors associated with the commodity boom, rather than those associated with neoliberalism, such as austere fiscal policy, trade openness, or 'financialization.' The distribution of market income has undergone developments at the sector level post-apartheid that have received little attention. While the aggregate wage share remains close to its initial level at the start of democracy, the wage share in mining is 12 percentage points lower than at the beginning of 1993, after recovering somewhat from a nearly 20 percentage point decline over the commodity boom period. The ratio of consumer prices to sector level producer prices is the 'wedge' between real consumption and real product wage rates and in theory a key relative price determining distributive outcomes. In sectors like mining, where real product and real consumption wage rates may depart in significant part, workers may not easily observe the real product wage and nominal productivity shocks may weakly carry through to wages. Other sectors have different dynamics. The wage share in manufacturing has stabilized at a level nearly 20 percentage points higher than where it was in 2005 and in utilities the wage share resembles a mountain with a steep climb during the first fifteen years of democracy and a sharp cliff edge around the Great Recession. This paper reviews existing debates about macroeconomic policy and performance, reflecting on how they relate to the evolving wage share before considering evidence from autoregressive distributed-lag and error correction models. The concluding analysis calls for reorienting the focus of predominant critique of post-apartheid macro policy from insufficient state allocation of resources toward social policy to a critique concerning the state's failure to mobilize the necessary resources to drive forth rapid structural transformation.
    Date: 2022–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-03693225&r=
  2. By: Malerba, Daniele
    Abstract: Germany promotes 'just transition' as a guiding principle for the global transition to a socially and environmentally sustainable economy that incorporates the necessary climate, environmental and energy policy measures. This includes the urgent transformation of economies to become emission neutral while ensuring a process whereby poverty and inequality are reduced, and no one is left behind.The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), the World Bank and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) worked together to explore ways to implement the concept of just transition in German development cooperation. The two papers that have resulted from this process outline approaches to a 'just transition for all' and highlight its potential to reduce poverty and inequality (SDG 1 and SDG 10). [...]
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:diedps:62022&r=
  3. By: Beinhocker, Eric
    Abstract: Markets must be made "biophilic" (i.e., compatible with life flourishing on Earth). To do so we must abandon prevailing notions of market efficiency and reconceive markets as social evolutionary systems embedded in nature. Such a re-conception enables us to see that constraining markets within biophysical boundaries does not result in zero-sum trade-offs with the economy, but instead would drive market evolution to new forms of prosperity.
    Date: 2022–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amz:wpaper:2022-12&r=
  4. By: Luis Guillermo Woo-Mora (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)
    Abstract: This paper uses skin tone and income information for over a hundred thousand individuals across 31 Latin American countries to study racial inequalities during the last decade. First, I estimate the welfare consequences of racial inequality. Subnational regions with higher income inequality between racial groups have worse economic development. Next, I provide evidence of a skin tone income premium. In an eleven-color palette, each darker shade in skin tone on average leads to a 3% decrease in income, with heterogeneity across countries. My analysis suggests racial discrimination is the main mechanism behind this income premium.
    Keywords: Race,Inequality,Economic Development,Discrimination
    Date: 2022–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-03693205&r=

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