Search

Recent trends in the market for corporate bonds -such as its increase in size, the significant presence of low-quality debt instruments and the trading activity of non-financial corporations- call for the need of an investigation of the possible implications on the real economy. Although the phenomenon is still minor, the present paper aims at giving some early insights concerning the introduction of a corporate bond market, where also nonfinancial firms can invest. To do so, we build on an existing macroeconomic agent-based model of the CATS tradition and we introduce the possibility for firms to raise money through an alternative credit channel, i.e., the corporate bond market- and the opportunity for households and firms to invest part of their financial wealth into a portfolio of Government bonds and corporate bonds. Experiments based on single runs or on 100 Monte Carlo simulations suggest that the introduction of a bond market may exacerbate existing crisis and recessions and that when firms buy bonds, inequality may escalate. To the best of our knowledge, this paper constitutes one of the first attempts to incorporate a corporate bond market into a macro ABM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing education costs is a crucial policy element with broad support in the U.S. However, is lowering the cost of learning a panacea for eliminating income inequality? In this paper, I theoretically examine the relationship between income inequality and the cost of education by building a three-stage overlapping generation model with two sectors and two education systems. In contrast to conventional studies treating education as a unified concept or in hierarchical order, I consider two types of education, each targeting the training of workers for different roles in production. Workers who decide to spend time learning and improving creativity skills can work to produce intermediate goods used in current production and illuminate future production technology. Coders who produce industrial robots are one example of workers who receive this type of education. The other type of education only improves workers' efficiency and helps them become experts in positions. For instance, office clerks who receive computer training can become more productive in dealing with their daily tasks. I pick a reasonable set of parameters, and the simulation result implies that reducing the cost of practical training may end up enlarging income inequality. The key is whether the effect resulting from the wage gap between jobs (wageeffect) dominates the effect of changing the share of workers in jobs (compositioneffect). Reducing the cost of learning creativity encourages marginal experts to learn creativity and marginal basic workers to receive training, leading to declining wage gaps and income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the degree of intergenerational earnings persistence and mobility in Ghana. We use micro-data from the third and sixth rounds of the Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS). We find relatively high estimates of intergenerational income elasticity (IGE), ranging from 40 to 54 percent, suggesting low intergenerational earnings mobility in Ghana. The results further point to a limited set of inherited circumstances that include the father's education and occupation. Our estimates show that a father's education and occupation determine one's family's economic status during the teenage years and explain a significant fraction of earnings inequality among male adults in Ghana. The novelty of this paper is the application of linear dynamic panel data models with repeated cross-sections to provide a consistent estimate of intergenerational elasticity of earnings in the framework of two-sample two-stage least squares (TSTSLS) using less restrictive functional form identification without exclusion restriction. The application of this new approach shows that a 1 percent increase in a father's lifetime income raises a son's permanent income by a range of 23.9 percent–40.9 percent, an indication of low intergenerational mobility. The results from the modified TSTSLS indicate that the traditional TSTSLS approach overestimates the IGE by at least 0.19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, higher education globally had started to change radically in terms of the proportion of young people enrolled in the system as well as society's expectations for what this would deliver. From the outset, Higher Education has featured research interrogating various aspects of inequality in higher education, including institutions and staff as well as students. This article offers an overview of that work. Our analysis is structured around three levels at which major questions on this topic have been framed and investigated. The macro level focuses on national systems and looks at widening participation, especially the increase in access to higher education for young people. The meso level mostly focuses on institutions and their engagement with organisational inequality. The micro level focuses on the lived experiences of academics, in this case focusing on gender and race. We adopted a thematic and purposive approach to article choice, ultimately selecting key papers for further illustrative analysis. In our analysis, we tracked changes in areas of empirical or other emphasis, the use of a variety of theoretical and epistemological frameworks and methods, policy recommendations, and the geographical locations of authors and their content. We noted a growing emphasis on intersectionality and a widening range of countries but also more critical analyses and suggestions for more radical changes in higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper captures trajectories of income in later-life and considers how membership of particular income trajectories is patterned by social class, sex and precarity in housing, pensions relationships, care and retirement. Using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2002-19) for over-50s, latent class analysis identifies 10 income trajectory clusters and on the basis of comparable income levels from around statutory retirement age (65), we further condense these clusters to four income trajectory groups of 'Luxury' (at or above £500 per week in retirement; 14%), Comfortable (£300-£500 per week in retirement; 28%), 'Boom-to-Bust' (increasing to £600 per week at age 70, falling to around £200 over age 80; 4%) and 'Always Poor' (typically less than £300 per week in retirement; 54%). Experiences of precarity and lower socio-economic position are independently associated with greater relative risks of being 'Always Poor' and lower relative risks of being in the 'Luxury' group, compared to the 'Comfortable' group. For example, those who always rent a house are 2 times (p < 0.001) more likely to be 'Always Poor' and 0.32 times (p < 0.001) less likely to be in the 'Luxury' than 'Comfortable group. Women are at more risk of being 'Always Poor' (RRR = 1.34, p < 0.001) in an unadjusted model, but the association attenuates and is not significant after controlling for pensions and partnership dissolution. Within groups, there are differences in the extent of volatility in income trajectories around retirement age across the ten clusters, that is associated with social class, pension type, involuntary retirement and partnership dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distributional outcomes of monetary policy have garnered increasing attention in recent years. While there has been significant progress on both the theoretical and methodological design of studies on advanced economies, research on China has been limited, partly because of its opaque and unique monetary policy framework. This paper investigates the distributional effects of monetary policy shocks in China from 2003 to 2021, as the central bank converges towards a standard interest-rate based regime. A novel policy shock series for China is constructed using the high-frequency external instrument identification method that addresses endogeneity concerns between macroeconomic factors and policy decisions. A structural vector autoregression system identified by short-run restrictions is then used to analyze the impulse responses of income measures and asset market returns to these shocks. Findings suggest that contractionary monetary policy shocks have a negative impact on inequality in China, by increasing the relative share of income at the top and decreasing the share at the bottom of the distribution. Adverse effects are stronger for lower income groups who derive most of their income from labor and business, and experience large and persistent negative effects from an unanticipated rate hike. Meanwhile, the impacts on top earners are neutral or modestly positive, since their income portfolios are diversified by property holdings. As such, this analysis supports the income composition channel theory in explaining the heterogeneity in household responses to monetary policy shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging has forced policy makers in most developed countries to reform pension systems with the aim of maintaining or re-establishing financial sustainability. This usually involves cost-cutting measures like later pension eligibility ages and lower replacement rates. Such reforms face harsh trade-offs with the objective of providing adequate pensions. Social welfare and inequality have emerged as crucial concerns about recent pension reforms, stressing that the lack of "social sustainability" may undermine financial sustainability. This paper analyzes such trade-offs and may explain why support for pension reform has dwindled in Europe. The paper evaluates reform effects on financial sustainability, social welfare, and intra- and inter-generational equality in a rich unified framework with several dimensions of heterogeneity and various behavioral reactions. Our simulations shed light on the complex distributional effects of pension reform on different cohorts and societal groups. They show where policy tends to reform unequally and why reforms may fail to find voters' approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the income, inequality, and poverty levels among Colombian children between 2019 and 2020, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database. The income distribution and changes among Colombian children are analyzed using the probability density function and growth incidence curve. The paper utilizes the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke methodology to measure child poverty in Colombia, decomposes the contributions of different subgroups to child poverty and its changes, and conducts a growth-distribution decomposition of changes in child poverty. The study also employs income-source decomposition to examine the contributions of different income sources to child inequality and its changes. The results show that Colombian children experienced a decline in income, an increase in inequality, and higher levels of poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children from households with higher dependency ratios and those living in rural areas were more likely to experience poverty. The main driver of increased poverty among Colombian children was decreased income, and there was a significant worsening of inequality for ultra-poor children. Labor income emerged as the primary source of inequality and its changes, whereas capital income and private transfers played a role in reducing poverty. However, public social benefits slightly increased inequality levels. Overall, the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is antipoor but pro-ultra-poor. To address similar recessions in the future, the government should expand public transfer payments especially programs targeting children to reduce income inequality and alleviate poverty among children, and bolster the provision of public services essential for children's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO2 emissions are disproportionately caused by more affluent consumers. In the political debate, this fact has triggered the demand for income redistribution and wealth taxes not only to reduce inequality but also to reduce CO2 emissions. This paper calculates the possible size of a green dividend, i.e., a reduction in total national CO2 emissions, of redistribution in 26 countries and concludes that, for most EU countries, it is negative if the redistribution is efficient, in the sense that it keeps average incomes constant. If the redistribution introduces inefficiencies that lead to total income losses, the negative green dividend, otherwise associated with additional redistribution, may be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the long-standing question of whether parental separation shapes offspring school performance drawing on retrospective data from a group of university students in Italy, a country that has historically had very low separation rates yet has experienced an important rise in family dissolution over the last two decades. Using survey data from 1st-year enrollees in undergraduate courses in Economics and Statistics at two points in time (2000 and 2017), we explore whether the association between parental separation and children's school performance (i) is observed both at the level of middle school (MS) and high school (HS); (ii) varies according to the age at which students experienced separation, and (iii) varies by parental socio-economic status (SES). Our results suggest that students whose parents separated before MS completion score on average 2 points less on the end-of-middle-school exam relative to students whose parents did not separate or separated after MS completion. Similarly, students whose parents separated before HS completion score 1 point less on the end-of-high-school exam relative to their counterpart. As such, we document a parental separation penalty both at the level of MS and HS, yet lower by half when separation occurs later in students' life course. Moreover, for HS grade parental separation is associated with more negative consequences when students experience it at very young ages (0–5), while for MS grade heterogeneity by age is less clear-cut. Such penalties are concentrated among children of low-educated mothers, particularly for HS, providing support to the "compensatory advantage" hypothesis predicting smaller penalties for children of high-SES parents. Overall, findings from this study corroborate existing evidence suggesting that the consequences of parental separation vary depending on a combination of social background and the "selectivity" of the educational outcome considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present some refinements and generalizations of existing numerical radius inequalities for Hilbert space operators. Further, we obtain some upper bounds of the numerical radius. We also obtain some numerical radius inequalities for 2 × 2 operator matrices which improve on some existing results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by certain results known from the literature, in this paper we give several new dynamic inequalities for B-monotone functions with respect to time scales nabla calculus. If the time scale represents the set of real numbers, our results reduce to integral inequalities known from the literature. On the other hand, in the setting of positive integers, we obtain new discrete inequalities for B-monotone sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After having summarized the paper by Grady & McGuire, one of their central conjectures, namely that inequality is necessary and sufficient for the emergence of efficient private law is discussed. It is argued that due to inequality, rulers have incentives to discriminate between subjects. Thus, their interests might very well diverge from those of many subjects with regard to private law. It is further argued that political transaction costs and path dependence should be taken explicitly into account when explaining the development of private law. The present author concludes that the approach taken by Grady & McGuire is compatible with that of public choice, although they aim to criticize the public choice approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific research activity produces the 'Matthew Effect' on resource allocation. Based on a data set in the life sciences field from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) during the 11th Five-Year-Plan (2006-2010), this paper makes an empirical study on how the Matthew Effect of funding allocation at the institutional level and city level impact scientific research activity output. With Gini coefficient evaluation, descriptive statistic analysis, and the Poisson regression model, we found that there has been a rapid increase in the concentration degree of funding allocation among institutions and cities. Within a period of 5 years, the Gini coefficients of total funding of institutions and cities as the units of measurement have increased from 0.61 and 0.74 to 0.67 and 0.79 respectively. However, this concentration in funding allocation did not result in significant additional benefits. Institutions awarded with more funding did not produce the expected positive spillover effect on their scientific research activity output. Instead, an 'inverted U-shape' pattern of decreasing returns to scale was discovered, under which there was a negative effect on internal scientific research activity in the majority of institutions with concentrated funding allocation. Meanwhile, the result shows that Young Scholars projects under the NFSC produced high-level output. We conclude the study by discussing the possible reasons of the inverted U-shape pattern and its policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing is the most important durable good consumed by households. This paper assesses the distributional effects of including the value of the flow of dwelling's services consumed by households with respect to the case where such value is excluded, testing different estimation methods in four developing countries. Including rental values leads to statistically significant and sizable changes in indicators of poverty and inequality that might also determine an international reranking of countries. This paper advances for the first time a step-by-step guide to the estimation of rental values, using information typically available in household surveys. As housing gains importance with the level of development of countries, accounting for rental values becomes significant in antipoverty programs, which need accurate information to minimize errors of inclusion and exclusion and the potential waste of scarce public resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Economic Inequality which contains a selection of articles published in the Journal which bring economic perspectives and methods to bear on dimensions of inequality highlighted in the Sustainable Development Goals. The papers show that the study of economic inequality has much to contribute to the global policy discourse which is underpinned by the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research confronting inequality in volunteering has mostly focused on the attribution of its benefits to different groups and communities, with little attention paid towards fundamental factors that shape such inequalities and how these intersect with volunteering opportunities. This paper highlights the importance of volunteering for young refugees in Uganda, as a means of both learning new skills and earning a livelihood. However, evidence suggests that not everyone has equal access to these opportunities, with inequalities primarily distributed along the lines of language, gender and education. The paper provides a critical examination of the kinds of volunteering organised and promoted by state actors and civil society organisations with a particular focus on access to volunteering opportunities and the ways they can produce inequalities among young people. Based on data drawn from a study among young refugees from South Sudan, Burundi, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in four settings in Uganda, the paper explores issues of access to opportunities as a core premise around which these inequalities are shaped. It demonstrates that rather than address social inequality, the obfuscation of these experiences in how volunteering is organised only serves to reinforce the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of Spanish households' indebtedness and financial vulnerability over the course of this century using micro-data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. Our results show a growing debt participation of Spanish households and an increase in the stock of outstanding debt of indebted households, a trend that reversed with the end of the Great Recession. Moreover, the percentage of financially vulnerable households according to three indicators grew dramatically until the end of the downward phase of the last economic cycle and showed considerable signs of improvement during the second half of 2010s. These results, nonetheless, call attention to the number of Spanish households being unable to service their debts in the face of an economic downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let A and B be n × n positive semidefinite matrices, and let | | · | | 2 be the Hilbert-Schmidt norm. Bhatia and then Hayajneh and Kittaneh, using different techniques, proved that | | A v B 1 - v + B v A 1 - v | | 2 ≤ | | A + B | | 2 for v ∈ 1 4 , 3 4 , which gives an affirmative answer to an open problem posed by Bourin for the special case of the Hilbert–Schmidt norm. In this paper, we prove a general unitarily invariant norm inequality from which we obtain a new proof of the above Hilbert–Schmidt norm inequality. We also prove that if r ≥ 1 , then | | | A v B 1 - v + B v A 1 - v | | | ≤ | | | (A 1 / r + B 1 / r) r | | | for 1 2 r ≤ v ≤ 2 r - 1 2 r , where | | | · | | | denotes any unitarily invariant norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let K (r) and arctanh r for r ∈ (0, 1) be the complete elliptic integral of the first kind and the inverse tangent hyperbolic function, respectively. In this paper, we prove that the double inequality Φ p r ′ arctanh r r < 2 π K r < Φ q r ′ arctanh r r holds for r ∈ (0, 1) if and only if q ⩽ 56 543/20 976 and 23(90π − 233)/(10(69π − 178)) ⩽ p ⩽ 3, where r′ 1 - r 2 and Φ q x = 60 17 q - 41 x 2 + 6 q x + 69 - 23 q 620 q - 1521 x 2 + 2 580 q - 1079 x + 5359 - 1780 q for q ⩽ 3 and x ∈ (0, 1). This improves some known results and yields several new bounds for the Gauss arithmetic–geometric mean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we give several refinements of Berezin norm and Berezin number inequalities of bounded linear operators defined on a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. In particular, we present some refinements of the triangle inequality for the Berezin norm of operators. In addition, we derive new upper bounds for the sum and poduct of Berezin number for two bounded operators. Moreover, we prove some new upper bounds for the Davis–Wielandt–Berezin radius of operators. Some applications of the newly obtained inequalities are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess the impact of the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession in Denmark this paper studies developments in Danish labor market income and disposable income from 1995 through 2019. We focus on the prime age working population of 25–54-year-old Danish citizens, with emphasis on labor market performance of the younger and less educated members of this labor force. The recession had a large and long-lasting impact on labor market earnings. Young individuals and, especially, those with least education suffered the largest setbacks to earnings developments. Disposable income was not affected in a similar way. Welfare state transfers and lower taxes softened the impact on disposable income, while the unprecedentedly low lending-rates and tax reform also elevated consumption possibilities. Tracking economic activity of the youngest cohorts after the onset of the Financial Crisis we find that catching up to earnings levels of previous cohorts took on average 8 years. For young men the setback to earnings was larger and catching-up slower. A decade following the onset of the Financial Crisis around 20% of young men, pertaining to the bottom of the earnings distribution, had still not caught up to the earnings of previous cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent contribution in this journal, Gagolewski et al. (Scientometrics 127(5):2829–2845, 2022) study a new model—the so-called 3 dimensions of scientific impact (3DSI) model—for representing a rank size distribution. The model depends on three parameters/dimensions: the total number of papers, the total number of citations and a third parameter, ρ , recognized by the authors as a shape parameter. We prove that ρ is an equivalent Gini coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of new data, this paper uses regression and descriptive approaches to examine Ghana's expenditure inequality from 1991 to 2017. Using household expenditure and several measures for the period under study, the paper observes that the inequality contiues to increase at the national level, mirroring similar trend at the sub-national level. Some administrative regions recorded over 30 percent increase in inequality. The regression-based approach reveals that household and community level characteristics contribute immensely to inequality. Household size, post secondary education, rural location and access to financial institutions are important contributors to the rising phenomenon of inequality. As the deadline of the Sustainable Development Goal approaches, this paper provides insights for policy action to attain the goal of reducing inequality especially in the Ghanaian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis poses new policy challenges and has spurred new research agendas in public economics. In this article, we selectively reflect on how the field of public economics has been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss several areas where more research is necessary. We highlight major changes and inequalities in the labor market and K-12 education, in addition to discussing how technological change creates new challenges for the taxation of income and consumption. We discuss various policy responses to these challenges and the role of fiscal federalism in the context of worldwide crises. Finally, we summarize the key issues discussed at the 2021 International Institute of Public Finance Congress and the papers published in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify the major significant dimensions that contribute to the overall quality of life (QOL) of wage workers in Egypt. As the QOL is a complex, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary concept, forty-seven indicators under five domains were chosen to investigate the QOL determinants of wage workers in Egypt, namely job characteristics, job satisfaction, ICT access, gender equality and women empowerment, and neighborhood services and utilities. Using data from the 2018 wave of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey, the paper employed structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to investigate the impact of proposed dimensions on the overall QOL. In addition, multi-group SEM analysis was implemented to measure how people differ in the way they assess their QOL on the basis of various moderating variables such as the geographical region of residence, age group, and years of schooling. The findings showed the significant impact of the chosen dimensions on the overall QOL. Moreover, the multi-group models showed a significant variation among compared groups, in which the weights of dimensions vary due to the differences in socio-cultural characteristics and the surrounding environment, confirming the complexity of such a concept. As people usually differ in the way they assess their QOL, which is affected by their characteristics and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the dynamic effects of economic disasters, captured by cumulative decline in output of at least 10% over 1 or more years, on disposable income inequality of a sample of 99 countries over the annual period of 1960–2017. Based on impulse response functions derived from a robust local projections method, we find that economic disasters increase inequality by 4%, with the overall effect being statistically significant and highly persistent over a period of 20 years following the shock. When we repeat the analysis by categorizing the 99 countries based on income groups and regions, we find that the strongest effects are felt by high-income countries (8%), and in Europe, Central Asia and North America (16%) taken together, as primarily driven by ex-socialist economies. Though of lesser magnitude, statistically significant increases in inequality are also observed for low-, and upper-middle-income economies, and the regions of Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and South Asia, and to some extent also for Sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings have important policy implications. Our findings suggest that the avoidance of economic crises is of paramount importance to ensure the sustainability of the welfare state, which in turn would allow for sound redistributive policies to reduce inequality, which can also help in indirectly reducing the negative impact of rare disasters on asset markets. In other words, our results have both economic and financial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In Germany there is a large wealth gap between East and West Germans as well as a gap in life satisfaction, with people in East Germany reporting to be less satisfied. This paper intends to shed light on the role of the different levels of wealth and their association with life satisfaction. On a wider scale, this paper examines psychological consequences of wealth inequality between large societal groups. Method: Longitudinal data from the years 2007, 2012, and 2017 of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) with a sample size of N = 5066 (Nfemale = 2522, Nwest = 3756, mage2007 = 50.46) was used. To test our hypothesis, multiple linear regression models as well as a fixed-effects regression model were run. Furthermore, to examine the development of wealth distribution between different birth cohorts in East and West Germany a latent growth curve model was calculated. Results: Net-worth was found to be a highly significant predictor for life satisfaction. This holds true for variance between respondents as well as for individual change over time within respondents. Additionally, the results show that the wealth gap between East and West Germans in total as well as within most of the birth cohorts increased. Conclusion: Due to their socialistic history and the related obstacles in acquiring wealth as well as the unbalanced distribution of GDR-assets after the reunification, East Germans are significantly less wealthy than West Germans. This has consequences on the mental well-being and the life satisfaction of East Germans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Growth Incidence Curve (GIC), introduced in the poverty measurement literature by Ravallion and Chen (Econ. Lett. 78(1), 93–99, 2003), proved to be a valuable and widely used tool to analyze the impact of growth on poverty and its 'pro-poorness'. Beyond pro-poorness, however, the relationship between the shape of GICs and social welfare is ambiguous. If a declining GIC, together with a positive overall rate of growth, is unambiguously associated with a social welfare gain, such a shape is not the most common and the reciprocal is not necessarily true. This paper analyzes the social welfare properties of GICs, as well as their non-anonymous counterpart (NAGICs), which describe how income growth depends on the initial rank of individuals in the initial income distribution. NAGICs thus account not only for the change in the distribution of income but also for income mobility, and differ conceptually from their anonymous counterpart. However, their social welfare interpretation proves to be very similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated, in part, by the recent surge of interest in robust inequality measurement, cross-country inequality comparisons, applications of heavy-tailed distributions and the study of global and upper-tail inequality, this paper focuses on robust analysis of heavy-tailedness properties and inequality in the upper tails of income distribution in Russia, as measured, mainly, by its tail indices. The study is based on recently developed approaches to robust inference on the degree of heavy-tailedness and their implications for the analysis of upper-tail inequality discussed in the paper. Among other results, the paper provides robust estimates of heavy-tailedness parameters and tail indices for Russian income distribution and their comparisons with the benchmark values in developed economies reported in the previous literature. The estimates point out to important similarity between heavy-tailedness properties of income distribution and their implications for the analysis of upper-tail income inequality in Russia and those in developed markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adoption of improved livestock breeds requires, as with other climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices, upfront investments, which might be a significant barrier for smallholders. For this reason, the climate-smart village (CSV) approach not only includes CSA interventions, but also interventions to improve access to savings and credit among smallholders by means of a community-based approach. In this paper we study smallholders in CSVs in Kenya who were encouraged, among others, to adopt improved livestock breeds for crossbreeding with indigenous breeds to improve their resilience to climate change and variability. The farmers were also encouraged to become part of savings and credit groups to improve smallholder access to finance. The objective of this paper is thus to determine the (distributional) impact of CSVs on access to savings and credit and the adoption of improved CSA practices. Due to the as good as random selection of CSVs, we are able to estimate the treatment effects on the treated for the smallholders who decided to participate in the CSA intervention by means of a linear probability model. The analysis is based on a balanced panel of 118 farm households interviewed in 2017, 2019, and 2020. The main findings of this study are that the CSV intervention increased the adoption of improved livestock breeds. It also stimulated the membership of savings and credit groups which in turn stimulated the adoption of improved livestock breeds. These findings point to the importance of community-based savings and loan initiatives to mobilize finance among farmers enabling them to invest in CSA practices. Also, the introduction of improved breeds in CSVs has benefited especially the larger livestock owners. However, the availability of credit is found to have mitigated the concentration of improved livestock ownership since the diffusion of improved livestock in CSVs was somewhat more equitable than the (spontaneous) spill-over diffusion in the non-CSVs (reducing the Gini by 0.04). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the polynomial of degree n having all its zeros in , , Jain in "On the derivative of a polynomial," Bull. Math. Soc. Sci. Math. Roumanie Tome 59, 339–347 (2016) proved that In this paper we strengthen the above inequality and other related results for the polynomials of degree . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the spatial heterogeneity in the human capital potential of Indonesia's next generation by constructing and analyzing sub-national human capital indices (HCI) for 34 provinces and 514 districts in Indonesia. The paper identifies data and methodological constraints in the construction of these sub-national indices and proposes and implements strategies to overcome these challenges. Several interesting findings emerge from the analysis. First, Indonesian's young generation can only achieve 53% of their future productivity relative to the full benchmark of health and education. Second, the variation in aggregate human capital potential across space in Indonesia is staggering: some parts of country are almost at par with countries like Vietnam and China while others have human capital levels that are comparable to Chad, Niger, and Sierra Leone. Third, differences in learning outcomes as measured by harmonized test scores account for the largest share of the variation in human capital across Indonesia, suggesting that the challenge of providing quality education remains one of the most important obstacles to equalizing opportunities for the next generation of Indonesians. And fourth, the correlation between government spending and performance on HCI at the district level appears rather weak, reinforcing conclusions reached by other recent studies that have highlighted the importance of focusing on the quality of spending. Finally, this paper also shows that Indonesia's human capital registered a modest improvement from 0.50 in 2013 to 0.53 in 2018 with stronger progress observed among the already top performing provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The premise of this paper arose from negative spatial legacies, a global and regional focus on inequality and questions about the success of spatial transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper responds by filling a gap in representing the spatial dimensions of socio-economic inequality on a local level. The aim is to describe the spatial patterns of socio-economic inequality in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, through a relative socio-economic classification (comprising multiple variables) and identify underlying influences to enduring socio-economic inequality. The results show the enduring spatial legacies of socio-economic status and segregation in the study area. There is a strong mutually reinforcing relationship between median household income, unemployment levels and concentrations of tertiary education qualifications which constitute underlying influences to socio-economic inequality and segregation. High and low socio-economic status is spatially polarised and high socio-economic status is concentrated in a small area of the city. The central parts of the study area and the fringes of heritage townships experienced declines in socio-economic status between 2001 and 2011. When considered along with changes in the racial make-up of neighbourhoods there is evidence of class segregation replacing racial segregation, but historical patterns of race and class remain significant. Future spatial transformation efforts should consider a variety of spatial trends (including housing development and economic restructuring), but should target the inner city and also focus on tertiary education attainment and improving access to employment opportunities to encourage greater social equality in the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships between public spending, employment, and growth are already complex and yet this complexity increases when considering employment disaggregated by gender. This paper analyzes the effects that public spending on social infrastructure (healthcare and education) has on women's relative employment using a panel dataset of 138 countries from 1995 to 2011. The panel data consisted of publicly-available data from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, the Educational Attainment Dataset, the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Database, and the World Governance Indicators. Employment was estimated under three separate specifications (the female employment rate, the male employment rate, and a measure of gender equality in employment) which were included in a three-stage least squares simultaneous equation estimation. The results indicate that both categories of social infrastructure spending are positively related to women's relative employment. Furthermore, the process of industrialization, the size of the population, and trade are all negatively related to women's relative employment. This paper has significant social and practical implications for gender-sensitive public policy discussions by providing empirical evidence in support of healthcare and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using regional data for Italy over the 2004–2019 period, this paper investigates the relationship between government effectiveness and inequality. For our empirical purposes, ordinary least squares, instrumental variable (IV) and generalized methods of moments regressions have been employed. Our evidence indicates that improved government effectiveness has some role in reducing inequality in the most developed regions of the North, but has no effect in both the Centre and in the peripheral Southern regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redistribution is one of the most central functions of modern government. Against the backdrop of rising income inequality in many countries, policymakers and economists call for redistributive policies to address the rising inequality directly. Yet, there has been little systematic analysis of whether and how inequality influences redistribution and of the role of economic, political and institutional factors of redistribution. Our paper fills this important gap in the literature. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that systematically analyzes and presents evidence from a large panel of countries over 1967–2014 that high-income inequality is consistently associated with greater redistribution. Making it richer, evidence shows the role of economic factors such as trade openness, old age dependency, and financial development, and suggests that political institutions are important factors in understanding a cross-country variation in the size of redistribution. Extensive robustness checks confirm the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1984, the AHV journal has provided a key forum for a community of interdisciplinary, international researchers, educators, and policy makers to analyze and debate core issues, values and hopes facing the nation and the world, and to recommend strategies and actions for addressing them. This agenda includes the more specific challenges and opportunities confronting agriculture, food systems, science, and communities, as well as broader contextual issues and grand challenges. This paper draws extensively on 40 years of AHV journal articles and reviews and begins with a focus on a limited number of key grand challenges (climate change and global warming; threats to democracy and the growing neo-nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism; and increasing national and international inequality). With these challenges as the underlining context, the remainder of the paper addresses core journal themes of sustainable agriculture and local food systems, citizen and public science, and empowered communities. Highlighted are numerous important journal contributions to the analyses and recommendations to address these hopes and themes. I conclude that these themes and hopes not only deserve to live but are essential for changing and redirecting an unsustainable and destructive environmental, economic, political and social agenda to a viable, livable and just democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss new iterated discrete inequalities of Hardy type involving matrix kernels. Under some conditions on matrix entries of the kernels, we establish weight characterizations of these inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, many authors have investigated possibility of simultaneous reduction of income inequality and pollution related to climate change. However, none of the previous researches reviewed the empirical studies of relationship between inequality and CO2 emissions. The authors of the selected papers, published from 2001 to 2019, found a diverse impact of income inequality on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It could depend on different trajectories of Kuznets curves. Furthermore, the majority of authors have provided theoretical analysis (even including human behaviour) of the influence of income inequality on CO2 emissions, considering only territorial (or production-based) emissions. However, this paper recommends to distinguish between the production-based and consumption-based emissions and suggests the revised approaches to the impact of income inequality on CO2 emissions with regard to the production-based and consumption-based emissions. Regarding the production-based emissions, the following approaches are proposed: (i) determination of environmental policies, which also could reveal and explain the leakage phenomenon, and the channels of EKC, i.e. (ii) scale, (iii) composition, (iv) technical and (v) globalization effects. The influence of income inequality on consumption-based emissions can be explained by applying two approaches, namely (i) inequality determined changes in working time (this approach is also related to "Veblen effect") and (ii) individual economic behaviours of households. Therefore, the present study provides a new insight into the subject of the relationship between income inequality and pollution related to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on social stratification by analysing the role of internal migration as a possible channel for the intergenerational transmission of inequality. While internal migration is associated with social mobility, it can also be used as a strategy of status maintenance among graduates from privileged backgrounds. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize whether internal migration for study or work, and subsequent labour market outcomes, are associated with social origins. Using a rich administrative and survey data set on a cohort of Italian graduates, findings show a substantive effect of social origins on graduates' migration for study but not on migration for work. Finally, the results also more tentatively indicate that migration for study is one relevant path connecting social origins and income, thus emphasizing how privilege is not bound to place, but travels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding the sharp estimate of max | z | = 1 | p ′ (z) | in terms of max | z | = 1 | p (z) | for the class of polynomials p(z) satisfying p (z) ≡ z n p (1 / z) has been a well-known open problem for a long time and many papers in this direction have appeared. The earliest result is due to Govil, Jain and Labelle [9] who proved that for polynomials p(z) satisfying p (z) ≡ z n p (1 / z) and having all the zeros either in left half or right half-plane, the inequality max | z | = 1 | p ′ (z) | ≤ n 2 max | z | = 1 | p (z) | holds. A question was posed whether this inequality is sharp. In this paper, we answer this question in the negative by obtaining a bound sharper than n 2 . We also conjecture that for such polynomials max | z | = 1 | p ′ (z) | ≤ ( n 2 - 2 - 1 4 (n - 2)) max | z | = 1 | p (z) | and provide evidence in support of this conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing Income disparities across populations has remained to be the foremost objective for policymakers. The extent of inequality can be measured for a certain group of households which provides information on the homogeneity of the various groups. Information derived through household analysis helps policymakers to design interventions. Inequality analysis overtime over a different group of the population can also be carried out for a particular economy. Another aspect through which inequality can be assessed is the comparison of different dimensions such as health provisions, education, and cash transfers. Analysis of income sources and consumption categories also helps the government to focus on social welfare. This paper aims to analyze income inequality in Pakistan across two periods and indicate its main determinants. Microdata was obtained from Household Income Expenditure Survey HIES for the year 2001–02 and 2018–19. Generalized entropy measures have been used to decompose income inequality at the subgroup level. Six household characteristics are identified for analyzing their contribution to income inequality. The study proves that education level, nature of employment, asset ownership, and gender contribute significantly to income inequality. The study further indicates that changes in income distribution for the bottom of the population through paid employment, female income, and asset ownership could impact income inequality. The study's results can be used to assess policy impact on social welfare and help policymakers design targeted interventions, develop efficient taxation, and create a sustainable model for inclusive growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new refinements on the integral form of Cauchy–Schwartz inequality known as Cauchy–Bunyakovsky inequality. It is proved that when we possess a weighted sum of a set of Cauchy–Bunyakovsky inequalities, there are two forms of refinements enhancing the precision of the original inequality. The superiority of one refinement over the other depends on the problem in which the presented theorem is utilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential indirect carbon emissions (RICE) are the major contributor to carbon emissions from the household sector. Regional RICE inequality has gradually become the focus of current issues. This paper has accounted for the RICE level of each province in China from 2010 to 2020 and assessed the RICE inequality at different regional scales employing the Theil index. Additionally, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of RICE inequality across three dimensions: region, consumption category, and driving factors, illustrating the principal sources and determinants of RICE inequality. The results indicate the following: (1) RICE inequality in China is generally on a downward trend. (2) The gap between eastern China and the other regions is the dominant source of RICE inequality. (3) Residence consumption affects RICE inequality far more than other consumption categories. (4) Disposable income and the urban–rural structure of the population are the predominant factors affecting RICE inequality for most regions. The consumption propensity effect has a relatively pronounced impact on RICE inequality in the central and western regions. Based on the analysis, local governments ought to focus on economic construction, promote urbanization, and regulate the housing market to alleviate the RICE inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie ( KZfSS) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper studies the effects of mining intensity and presence on Peru's mining districts' welfare from 2004 to 2019. A pooled cross-section regression is used which is constructed from different sources and two sets of comparisons are made: the first compare districts with and without mining presence within mining provinces, and the second compares districts with and without mining presence without the constraint of being within mining provinces. The primary dependent variables included in the model are income inequality, labor income, and poverty rate. In mining districts, inequality has increased, but labor income has increased, and poverty has decreased compared to non-mining districts. However, once control for province-fixed effects and clustered by standard errors at the district level, the significance of inequality is lost, while the impacts on labor income and poverty remain. The transmission mechanisms are human capital, employment, and redistributive policies. Also the mining presence has had positive effects on labor income in other sectors such as construction and commerce; Finally, the labor incomes of unskilled workers increases but not the labor incomes of skilled workers, and it has negatively impacted informal employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant policy measures have disproportionally affected the lives of migrants worldwide. Focusing on inequalities between social groups, studies have tended to neglect the role of local embeddedness as a factor influencing the extent to which individuals are affected by COVID-19. In this paper, we study the vulnerabilities of people with different migration experiences in an urban setting in the early stages of the pandemic, focusing on three key livelihood assets: economic, social, and human capital (health). Our analyses are based on online survey data (n = 1381) collected among international migrants, second-generation residents (those with at least one parent born abroad), and non-migrants residing in Amsterdam in July 2020. We find that international migrants, and particularly those who arrived in the city more recently, reported larger shocks to their economic and social capital than other city residents. This finding illustrates the vulnerabilities of "newcomers" to the city and their limited resilience to shocks. Second-generation residents were particularly vulnerable in terms of health, but this relationship was strongly mediated by education and neighborhood effects. In all three groups, those with poor relative wealth and those who were self-employed were more vulnerable to economic shocks. Our findings illustrate how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities in vulnerabilities across migrant and non-migrant groups, and how those who were locally embedded, including migrants and non-migrants, were less likely to be negatively affected by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hate crimes in the US have reached their highest recorded levels in more than a decade. Greater understanding of the factors contributing to violence toward minority groups is needed to support evidence-based policies to curb race crime. This study analyzes the causes of race crime in the US using a state-level dynamic empirical model derived from the combination of well-recognized criminological theories. To our knowledge, the study provides the only empirical analyses of race crimes across the US. The paper applies a dynamic panel model to better use crime data at the aggregate level by taking advantage of the longitudinal data structure to account for unobservable factors across states. It also draws upon the dynamic panel structure to integrate the theoretical framework of social learning of crime, together with strain theory and theory of doing difference, to identify potential causal factors. The findings confirm implications derived from strain theory, theories of doing difference, and social learning theory of crime, respectively, indicating the value of an integrated framework. The results suggest "closing gaps" is key in deterring race crime. Over the recent decade, a 1% annual change in key factors that would close the economic gap, increase understanding of cultural difference, incorporate seniors into communities, and stop cascading effects of race crime would, individually, have lowered the 2019 race crime rate by an estimated 12–21% and, in combination, by approximately 28%. Potential policy interventions that merit testing include increasing cultural awareness education, improving access to credit, supporting inter-generational community programs, and appropriate training and resources to support law enforcement personnel to collect, manage, and report race crime data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study a geometrical inequality conjecture which states that for any four points on a hemisphere with the unit radius, the largest sum of distances between the points is 4 + 4 2 , the best configuration is a regular square inscribed to the equator, and for any five points, the largest sum is 5 5 + 2 5 and the best configuration is the regular pentagon inscribed to the equator. We prove that the conjectured configurations are local optimal, and construct a rectangular neighborhood of the local maximum point in the related feasible set, whose size is explicitly determined, and prove that (1): the objective function is bounded by a quadratic polynomial which takes the local maximum point as the unique critical point in the neighborhood, and (2): the remaining part of the feasible set can be partitioned into a finite union of a large number of very small cubes so that on each small cube, the conjecture can be verified by estimating the objective function with exact numerical computation. We also explain the method for constructing the neighborhoods and upper-bound quadratic polynomials in detail and describe the computation process outside the constructed neighborhoods briefly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]