Search results for " income"

Regional Income Inequality in Spain 1860–2015

2018

How has regional economic inequality evolved since 1860? Is there a relationship between initial per-capita income and regional growth rates? Is there any relation between the evolution of regional inequality and the economic development process in Spain? In order to answer these questions, a number of different indicators of inequality are offered in this chapter. Then the patterns of convergence or divergence followed by Spanish regions from the mid-nineteenth century to the present are studied. Regional income inequality rose in the early stages of economic development and then declined. However, with high levels of development, around the 1980s, a change of trend is observed. In other w…

In-Work Benefits for Married Couples: An Ex-Ante Evaluation of EITC and WTC Policies in Italy

2012

This paper investigates labor supply and redistributive effects of in-work benefits for Italian married couples using a tax-benefit microsimulation model and a multi-sectoral discrete choice model of labor supply. We consider in-work benefits based on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Working Tax Credit (WTC) existing in the US and the UK, respectively. The standard design of these income support mechanisms is however augmented with a premium for two-earner households to avoid potential disincentive effects on secondary earners. Revenue neutral policy simulations show that our reforms may greatly improve the current Italian tax-benefit system in terms of both incentive and redistr…

PROFITABILITY OF SMALL LOQUAT FARMS IN SICILY

2015

The northern Sicilian coastline, known for its favorable soil and climatic conditions, represents the main production area in Italy for loquat (Eriobotrya japonica Lindl.). Over the years, the absence of process innovation and appropriate marketing strategies caused a gradual decline of loquat cultivation. This study estimates the profitability of some representative Sicilian farms that grow loquat in the area of Trabia (Palermo Province), where this crop is important for the local economy. The results highlighted a productive scenario characterized by high production costs, where only a family farm that supplies much of its own labor can survive.

The Real Effects of Bank Branch Deregulation at Various Stages of Economic Development: The European Experience

2011

This paper provides evidence on the links between financial deregulation and economic performance in a European context. Specifically, we study the relaxation of bank branching restrictions in Spain which triggered off a remarkable inter-regional expansion of savings banks which was coincidental with an unprecedented period of sustained growth. Although related questions have been largely investigated for the US, the European experiences remain largely unexplored. An additional contribution is the use of quantile regression techniques which, unlike traditional OLS regression analysis, do not focus on the “average effect for the average province”. This change of focus helps to overcome the d…

The Mechanics of Progress in Education: Evidence from Cross-Country Data

1998

The document examines first the relationship between a number of indicators concerning a country system of education (global and per-pupil public resources by level of schooling, education coverage, quality of educational outcomes, efficiency in student flow, external efficiency, equity by gender and in resource allocation, ..) and and its environment (overall sector context, demographic pressure fiscal, capacity, structure of employment, ..) on the one hand, its level of economic development on the other. The paper analyzes how the economic development affects the amount of resources mobilized for the sector with the finding that the main source of resources lies in the decrease of the tea…

Pharmaceutical promotion and guided-prescription in low- and middle-income countries: A need for new regulations.

2020

Growth vs. Level Effect of Population Change on Economic Development: An Inspection into Human-Capital-Related Mechanisms

2011

This paper studies the different mechanisms and the dynamics through which demography is channeled to the economy. We analyze the role of demographic changes in the economic development process by studying the transitional and the long-run impact of both the rate of population growth and the initial population size on the levels of per capita human capital and income. We do that in an enlarged Lucas-Uzawa model with intergenerational altruism. In contrast to the existing theoretical literature, the long-run level effects of demographic changes, i.e. their impact on the levels of the variables along the balanced growth path, are deeply characterized in addition to the more standard long-run …

Financial Globalization, Fiscal Policies and the Distribution of Income

2020

This paper provides evidence that financial globalization—liberalization of the capital account—makes income distribution more uneven by raising the share of income that goes to the richest income deciles. We also offer evidence that changes in domestic fiscal policies in the aftermath of financial globalization are one channel through which these distributional effects could occur. Specifically, we show that episodes of capital account liberalization are followed by greater fiscal consolidation and reduced fiscal redistribution, both of which lead to increased inequality.

Integrated capital shares

2019

In empirical macroeconomics, inter-dependencies between countries are often analysed using cross-country correlations or graphical investigation of time series. This study shows that applying an alternative methodological approach - identification of common unobservable factors and using them as explanatory variables for country-specific time series - indicates a stronger cross-country integration of functional income distributions than the standard methods. The results vary only little between different samples, where both the country and year coverage change. Moreover, the main findings are not sensitive to the way capital depreciation is taken into account. The primary driving factor see…

Households' Balance Sheets and the Effect of Fiscal Policy

2022

Using households' balance-sheet composition in the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, we identify six household types. Since 1999, there has been a decline in the share of patient households and an increase in the share of impatient households with negative wealth. Using a six-agent New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions, we explore how changes in households' shares affect the transmission of government spending shocks. We show that the relative share of households in the left tail of the wealth distribution plays a key role in the aggregate marginal propensity to consume, the magnitude of fiscal multipliers, and the distributional consequences of government spending shocks. W…