The spatial inequality of wage income in Barcelona Metropolitan Area

ABSTRACT The measure and estimation of income levels in Barcelona Metropolitan Area (BMA) goes back a long way. Using different approaches and focusing on different municipalities, there is a lot of work in the field. The majority of the literature has focused on the estimation of income levels using variables related to consumption. The empirical evidence on wage differentials has shown an important growth during 80’s and 90’s especially in United Kingdom and USA. Less is known on spatial distribution of inequality. This paper presents a new data set for analyzing spatial distribution of wage income. This data is obtained by matching Wage Structure Survey (WSS) with data from Census disaggregated by census tracts. In this way we have a unique data set with wage incomes for every census track for 36 municipalities belonging to BMA. We develop a descriptive analysis of spatial distribution, testing for spatial autocorrelation and use the family of Generalised Entropy Indices to measure inequality. Properties of the index allow us to decompose inequality into inter and intra-municipality measures. Since we have two cross-sectional data for WSS (1995-2002) we can also analyze the evolution of the inequality in this period of economic growth. Key words: spatial distribution of wages, spatial autocorrelation, inequality indices.

Health and income: a robust comparison of Canada and the US

This paper uses sequential stochastic dominance procedures to compare the joint distribution of health and income across space and time. It is the First application of which we are aware of methods to compare multidimensional distributions of income and health using procedures that are robust to aggregation techniques. The paper's approach is more general than comparisons of health gradients and does not require the estimation of health equivalent incomes. We illustrate the approach by contrasting Canada and the US using comparable data. Canada dominates the US over the lower bidimensional welfare distribution of health and income, though not generally in terms of the uni-dimensional distribution of health or income. The paper also finds that welfare for both Canadians and Americans has not unambiguously improved during the last decade over the joint distribution of income and health, in spite of the fact that the uni-dimensional distributions of income have clearly improved during that period.

A Comparison of the poverty impact of transfers, taxes and market income across five OECD Countries

This paper compares the poverty reduction impact of income sources, taxes and transfers across five OECD countries. Since the estimation of that impact can depend on the order in which the various income sources are introduced into the analysis, it is done by using the Shapley value. Estimates of the poverty reduction impact are presented in a normalized and un-normalized fashion, in order to take into into account the total as well as the per dollar impacts. The methodology is applied to data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database.

The Causal effect of education on aggregate income

Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is con- stant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coeficients. As rich countries have on average better educational quality, differences in human capital between countries are larger than has been typically assumed in the development accounting literature. Consequently, factor accumulation explains a considerably larger share of income differences across countries than what is usually found.

Investor protection and income inequality: risk sharing vs risk taking

This paper studies the relationship between investor protection, entrepreneurial risk taking and income inequality. In the presence of market frictions, better protection makes investors more willing to take on entrepreneurial risk when lending to firms, thereby improving the degree of risk sharing between financiers and entrepreneurs. On the other hand, by increasing risk sharing, investor protection also induces more firms to undertake risky projects. By increasing entrepreneurial risk taking, it raises income dispersion. By reducing the risk faced by entrepreneurs, it reduces income volatility. As a result, investor protection raises income inequality to the extent that it fosters risk taking, while it reduces it for a given level of risk taking. Empirical evidence from a panel of forty-five countries spanning the period 1976-2000 supports the predictions of the model.

Neither dashboard nor 'mashup' indices: an empirical wealth approach as a pathway to a comprehensive measure of development

The article is composed of two sections. The first one is a critical review of the three main alternative indices to GDP which were proposed in the last decades – the Human Development Index (HDI), the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), and the Happy Planet Index (HPI) – which is made on the basis of conceptual foundations, rather than looking at issues of statistical consistency or mathematical refinement as most of the literature does. The pars construens aims to propose an alternative measure, the composite wealth index, consistent with an approach to development based on the notion of composite wealth, which is in turn derived from an empirical common sense criterion. Arguably, this approach is suitable to be conveyed into an easily understandable and coherent indicator, and thus appropriate to track development in its various dimensions: simple in its formulation, the wealth approach can incorporate social and ecological goals without significant alterations in conceptual foundations, while reducing to a minimum arbitrary weighting.

Ecological Footprint Inequality across countries: the role of environment intensity, income and interaction effects

Recently, White (2007) analysed the international inequalities in Ecological Footprints per capita (EF hereafter) based on a two-factor decomposition of an index from the Atkinson family (Atkinson (1970)). Specifically, this paper evaluated the separate role of environment intensity (EF/GDP) and average income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities. However, in addition to other comments on their appeal, this decomposition suffers from the serious limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation (York et al. (2005)). This paper proposes, by way of an alternative, a decomposition of a conceptually similar index like Theil’s (Theil, 1967) which, in effect, permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an inter-factor correlation, in line with Duro and Padilla (2006). This decomposition might, in turn, be extended to group inequality components (Shorrocks, 1980), an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the Atkinson indices. The proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the international inequalities in EF per capita for the 1980-2007 period and, amongst other results, we find that, indeed, the interactive component explains, to a significant extent, the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall international inequalities.

Ecological Footprint Inequality across countries: the role of environment intensity, income and interaction effects

Recently, White (2007) analysed the international inequalities in Ecological Footprints per capita (EF hereafter) based on a two-factor decomposition of an index from the Atkinson family (Atkinson (1970)). Specifically, this paper evaluated the separate role of environment intensity (EF/GDP) and average income as explanatory factors for these global inequalities. However, in addition to other comments on their appeal, this decomposition suffers from the serious limitation of the omission of the role exerted by probable factorial correlation (York et al. (2005)). This paper proposes, by way of an alternative, a decomposition of a conceptually similar index like Theil’s (Theil, 1967) which, in effect, permits clear decomposition in terms of the role of both factors plus an inter-factor correlation, in line with Duro and Padilla (2006). This decomposition might, in turn, be extended to group inequality components (Shorrocks, 1980), an analysis that cannot be conducted in the case of the Atkinson indices. The proposed methodology is implemented empirically with the aim of analysing the international inequalities in EF per capita for the 1980-2007 period and, amongst other results, we find that, indeed, the interactive component explains, to a significant extent, the apparent pattern of stability observed in overall international inequalities. Key words: ecological footprint; international environmental distribution; inequality decomposition

Comprehensive evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer performance with retransmissions

Supported by IEEE 802.15.4 standardization activities, embedded networks have been gaining popularity in recent years. The focus of this paper is to quantify the behavior of key networking metrics of IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled nodes under typical operating conditions, with the inclusion of packet retransmissions. We corrected and extended previous analyses by scrutinizing the assumptions on which the prevalent Markovian modeling is generally based. By means of a comparative study, we singled out which of the assumptions impact each of the performance metrics (throughput, delay, power consumption, collision probability, and packet-discard probability). In particular, we showed that - unlike what is usually assumed - the probability that a node senses the channel busy is not constant for all the stages of the backoff procedure and that these differences have a noticeable impact on backoff delay, packet-discard probability, and power consumption. Similarly, we showed that - again contrary to common assumption - the probability of obtaining transmission access to the channel depends on the number of nodes that is simultaneously sensing it. We evidenced that ignoring this dependence has a significant impact on the calculated values of throughput and collision probability. Circumventing these and other assumptions, we rigorously characterize, through a semianalytical approach, the key metrics in a beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 system with retransmissions.

Social bases of changing income distributions

On the backdrop of very little sociological concern with rising income inequality, this paper examines how key changes in sociodemographic behaviour may help shed additional light on changes in household income distribution and especially on long-term income dynamics and inter-generational mobility. The paper argues that the joint effect of rising marital homogamy in terms of human capital and labour supply contributes generally to widen the income gap between households. Only uner very restrictive conditions, namely when the labour supply of low educated women grows dis-proportionally fast, will women's earnings contribute to more equality. Finally, the paper suggests that women's rising employment commitments contribute positively to equalizing the opportunity structure both via the income effect and if quality care is available, also via more homogenous cultural and cognitive stimulation of children. Mother's work does not generally have adverse effects for children's development.

Predictable Life-Cycle Shocks, Income Risk and Consumption Inequality

Was the increase in income inequality in the US due to permanent shocks or merely to an increase in the variance of transitory shocks? The implications for consumption and welfare depend crucially on the answer to this question. We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income to decompose idiosyncratic changes in income into predictable life-cycle changes, transitory and permanent shocks and estimate the contribution of each to total inequality. Our model fits the joint evolution of consumption and income inequality well and delivers two main results. First, we find that permanent changes in income explain all of the increase in inequality in the 1980s and 90s. Second, we reconcile this finding with the fact that consumption inequality did not increase much over this period. Our results support the view that many permanent changes in income are predictable for consumers, even if they look unpredictable to the econometrician, consistent with models of heterogeneous income profiles.

Social spending and demographics: The role of public policies in the intergenerational redistribution of income. Empirical evidence from Spain and Catalonia

The demographic shift underway in Southern Europe requires a revision of some of the fundamental principles of the traditional welfare state. We analyze the evolution of several aspects of welfare and social expenditure over the last two decades. We find that in the context of the present demographic changes and real estate boom current social and pension policy leads to a new distribution of benefits and burdens which is highly intergenerationally unequal. We argue for a revised definition of public policy based on Musgrave's proposition as a possible rule for an intergenerationally fair distribution.

The world distribution of income (estimated from individual country distributions)

We estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individualincome distributions for 125 countries between 1970 and 1998. Weestimate poverty rates and headcounts by integrating the density functionbelow the $1/day and $2/day poverty lines. We find that poverty ratesdecline substantially over the last twenty years. We compute povertyheadcounts and find that the number of one-dollar poor declined by 235million between 1976 and 1998. The number of $2/day poor declined by 450million over the same period. We analyze poverty across different regionsand countries. Asia is a great success, especially after 1980. LatinAmerica reduced poverty substantially in the 1970s but progress stoppedin the 1980s and 1990s. The worst performer was Africa, where povertyrates increased substantially over the last thirty years: the number of$1/day poor in Africa increased by 175 million between 1970 and 1998,and the number of $2/day poor increased by 227. Africa hosted 11% ofthe world s poor in 1960. It hosted 66% of them in 1998. We estimatenine indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution ofincome. All of them show substantial reductions in global incomeinequality during the 1980s and 1990s.

On the distribution of income and worker assignment under intra-firm spillovers, with an application to ideas and networks

We study the earnings structure and the equilibrium assignment of workers when workers exert intra-firm spillovers on each other.We allow for arbitrary spillovers provided output depends on some aggregate index of workers' skill. Despite the possibility of increasing returns to skills, equilibrium typically exists. We show that equilibrium will typically be segregated; that the skill space can be partitioned into a set of segments and any firm hires from only one segment. Next, we apply the model to analyze the effect of information technology on segmentation and the distribution of income. There are two types of human capital, productivity and creativity, i.e. the ability to produce ideas that may be duplicated over a network. Under plausible assumptions, inequality rises and then falls when network size increases, and the poorest workers cannot lose. We also analyze the impact of an improvement in worker quality and of an increased international mobility of ideas.

Oil price shocks, income and democracy

We examine the effect of oil price fluctuations ondemocratic institutions over the 1960-2007 period. We also exploitthe very persistent response of income to oil price fluctuations tostudy the effect of persistent (oil price-driven) income shocks ondemocracy. Our results indicate that countries with greater net oilexports over GDP see improvements in democratic institutionsfollowing upturns in international oil prices. We estimate that a 1percentage point increase in per capita GDP growth due to apositive oil price shock increases the Polity democracy score byaround 0.2 percentage points on impact and by around 2 percentagepoints in the long run. The effect on the probability of a democratictransition is around 0.4 percentage points.