1,721,095 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Essays in economic development and conflict
Get PDFtextMy dissertation consists of three chapters dealing with issues related to economic development and conflict. The first and second chapters discuss military expenditures and inequality from global and regional perspectives. The third chapter focuses on the impact of wars on relative wages in the food sector.
In the first chapter we show that a substantial body of literature has uncovered a robust relationship between institutions-including unionization and political democracy- and economic inequality. This first chapter examines the effect of military spending on inequality controlling for the size of armed forces, GDP growth, per capita income and other possible determinants. Using a panel regression with country level observations from 1987-1997, we obtained consistent estimates that there is a positive effect of military expenditure on pay inequality. This relationship is robust across variable definitions and model specification. Given the close relationship between pay and income this result suggests that a country’s reduction in military spending could reduce income inequality.
Studying the inequality of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries provides an opportunity to assess factors that shape the countries’ suc- cess in distributing the wealth by looking beyond simple measures of wealth creation. This second chapter examines two issues presented in the first chapter with more emphasis on the regional dynamics. The empirical results indicate that again the military spending has strong and positive effect on inequality. A systematic reduction in military spending could reduce the level of inequality since it frees resources for other social and economic development programs.
The final chapter introduces a new perspective in considering the impact of wars on relative wages in the food sector. In a state of war people are at risk of losing one of their most basic rights — food. Millions may live in the shadow of famine and poverty. Micro-level analyses of "food-cost ratio" during civil or international wars give us insight into governments’ ability, or inability to mobilize the resources to counter the danger of hunger and famine. Understanding the factors that make the food-cost ratio rise may help to formulate policy responses that mitigate human suffering in wartime environments. Therefore, this paper examines two questions: first, the effect of wars on the food-cost ratio; second, what are policies likely reduce the food-cost ratio? To answer these research questions we use panel data for 50 countries from the 1960s to the 1990s. The results of this paper will show that civil wars positively affect the food-cost ratio, while international wars apparently do not. The policy implication of this analysis is that in the event of a civil war, policy makers lack the resources to exert control on rising food-cost ratio. A rise in the food-cost ratio could be translated into
higher food prices or lower purchasing power over food, either of which may havedevastating impacts on social and economic well-being. In the event of an international war, as opposed to civil war, governments have a greater capacity to prioritize and mobilize resources. Food imports remain an effective tool to reduce the rise in the food-cost ratio.Public Polic
Recommended from our members
Shifting pollution patterns in the production of refined oil products and industrial chemicals under NAFTA
No full texttextEconomic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) has provided a net environmental benefit to Mexico by promoting the
import of relatively less pollution-intensive U.S. refined oil products and industrial
chemicals. The accelerated U.S. penetration of the Mexican market for these products
replaces some pollution-intensive production by Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the
government-owned oil production and refining company. Calculations of the air
emissions per unit of production for Mexican refineries and for Texas refineries that
produce the same products reveal that for one pollutant –volatile organic compounds
– the pollution intensity of Mexican production was more than 10 times higher than
the pollution intensity of Texas production in 1999. For sulfur oxides the Mexican
pollution intensity was nine times higher. For other air pollutants, Mexican pollution
intensity of production also was significantly higher.
Calculations of air emissions from Texas refineries per unit of production
indicate that although Texas refineries faced increasingly stringent air quality
regulations under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, refineries responded to this
challenge with technological and environmental management changes that resulted in
vi
increased output of refined products, even as certain emissions of criteria pollutants
dropped and others remained significantly unchanged. This industry response
provided a net environmental benefit to Texas. The ability of Texas refineries to adapt
to stringent regulations while increasing production, combined with the increased
volume of U.S. exports of refined products and industrial chemicals to Mexico under
NAFTA, implies that Mexican refineries do not benefit from a comparative advantage
stemming from less stringent environmental regulations.
NAFTA’s role in changing the level of air emissions in Mexico from refinery
and petrochemical production primarily has been to facilitate U.S. penetration of the
Mexican market, thereby replacing more pollution-intensive production. Evidence
also suggests that deepening economic integration under NAFTA accelerates the
strengthening of air quality regulations in Mexico as well as demands on Pemex to
provide cleaner burning fuels for Mexico’s transportation sector.La
Recommended from our members
Contingency on the Korean peninsula : collapse to unification
Get PDFtextA collapsed North Korea would pose a momentous test to the future of the region. The five regional powers—South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States—are ill-prepared for such an event, partly because of the act of planning for it would upset North Korea. However, the potential challenges of a collapse are too great to ignore. This study presents an historical and political analysis of the increasing risk that North Korea may collapse. A comparison with earlier cases suggests that triggers and indicators of collapse can be identified, including increasing cross-border information flows, defections, and the possible death or incapacitation of North Korea’s leader. Further, the large and growing economic disparity between North Korea and its neighbors, South Korea and China, points to likely consequences of collapse, including possible mass migration. The study then examines the roles of South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan, and Russia in the future of the Korean peninsula; it concludes with a further consideration of the paradox of collapse planning, but argues that it would be better to run the risks entailed in the exercise than to be caught flatfooted when a collapse occurs. The analysis is based on interviews, surveys, and documents in English and Korean.Public Polic
Recommended from our members
Flexibility in European wage structure and its implications for the European unemployment
Get PDFtextThis dissertation, titled “Flexibility in European Wage Structure and its
implications for the European Unemployment,” studies the problem of high rates of
unemployment in Europe during the last few decades through the optic of European wage
behavior. It examines the European wage structure – within and between European
countries – to find out factors that drive wages and thereby, unemployment rates in
European countries. A conventional view of European problem of high unemployment
argues that European wages are explained by cross-country differences in certain labor
market policies and institutions, and that the policies and institutions at the country-level
are the principal source of the problem. This dissertation argues instead that European
wages are explained by differences in macroeconomic performances and in levels of
international competitiveness between countries and also between sectors within the
countries, and by certain continental and global level factors, and that a full
understanding of the effects of those factors is necessary to explain the European problem of high unemployment. By applying numerical techniques, namely a combination of
cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis, this dissertation finds that European
wages are driven by factors pointed out by the dissertation, which also explain the high
rates of unemployment in Europe over the last few decades.Public Polic
Recommended from our members
Residents only : inequality and development through the rise of U.S. suburbanization
Get PDFThis report examines development and inequality via the lens of residential segregation and suburbanization in the United States. Primarily focusing on development post-World War II, this paper provides a historical analysis of how specific policies around housing and urban planning have contributed to social inequity in the United States. A brief discussion of how these policies have changed over time and their modern implications is included. With a specific focus on Austin, TX, this report also reviews the further effects of residential segregation on other areas such as education, socioeconomic mobility, and more.Public AffairsSocial Wor
Recommended from our members
Wage inequality and globalization : evidence from manufacturing industries
No full texttextThe purpose of this study is to examine the recent trend of the relative
distribution of wages in the manufacturing industries and its relationship with
globalization. This study takes advantage of a comparable and consistent data set
on wage inequality across industries covering most OECD and non-OECD
countries for the past thirty years, and various parametric and non-parametric
statistical techniques. The principal questions are 1) whether wage inequality has
been rising in recent year; 2) how to explain the observed trend of wage
inequality, and; 3) what is the role of globalization in this change. For the first
question, this study finds that there is a sharp increase in inequality after the early
1980s, and this trend appears not only due to national conditions but also to global
economic conditions that affect countries altogether.
For the second question, three pervasive explanations such as international
trade, skill-biased technological change, and institutional differences are reviewed
and critiqued. An alternative hypothesis based on the rents sharing model, in
which interindustry wage inequality is regarded as a result of the skewed
distribution of the industrial premiums (economic rents) due to the differences in
monopoly power in the product market, is presented and analyzed. The statistical
results indicate that the profit rate is positively associated with the level of
industrial wage, and widening wage differentials are mostly led by the upper part
of the industrial wage distribution rather than by the shrinkage of the lower part.
For the third question, international trade and foreign direct investment
(FDI) are used as proxies for globalization to examine their effects on wage
inequality. The empirical evidence shows that FDI is clearly associated with the
increases in wage inequality in developed as well as developing countries but
international trade is only weakly associated with. And both FDI and international
trade are positively associated with increases in the upper part of the wage
distribution in developed countries but this pattern is weakly observed in
developing countries. Finally other macroeconomic conditions and the
institutional factors in the labor market appear to have been important in
determining the impacts of globalization. Some policy implications and new
research directions for a macroeconomic dynamics of inequality based on the
findings in this study are discussed.Public Affair
Recommended from our members
Regional labor markets, unemployment and inequality in Europe
Get PDFtext‘Regional Labor Markets, Unemployment and Inequality in Europe’, studies the problem of unemployment in the European Union. The methodology departs from the labor market flexibility hypothesis in distinct ways. This hypothesis attributes a series of rigidities to the European labor market as the inducers of unemployment and prescribes a series of labor market reforms to make labor markets more flexible. Studies supporting the labor market hypothesis are typically conducted at the national level. The dissertation changes the unit of analysis to the regional level. It also incorporates the relationship between pay-inequality and unemployment into the analysis. With these changes, forces at the regional, national and continental level affecting the unemployment rate are incorporated in the analysis. The dissertation is organized in three main sections. The first section provides a general overview of the dissertation and a literature review on existing studies of European unemployment with emphasis on the flexible labor market hypothesis. The second section computes the variable ‘pay inequality’ at the regional level from payroll data. This section also develops the regional model of unemployment
and tests the model with an econometric unbalance panel that permits the separation of regional, national, and continental influences on European unemployment from 19842000. In the third section, three chapters test various implications of the regional model of unemployment. The first tests the relationship between employment growth and inequality for 14 European countries from 1995-2000. The second forecasts the rates of unemployment for five Polish regions in the year 2014 using the main regional model of unemployment and a mahalanobis matching procedure. This chapter discusses the policy implications under various simulated scenarios for reducing rates of unemployment in the five Polish regions. The third studies the case of Spain, and the extreme fluctuations in its unemployment rate during the past 30 years using the results of the main model that apply to this country and a hypothesis relating currency devaluations to rates of unemployment. The final chapter collects the overall finding and provides a series of policy recommendations for Europe and its problem of unemployment.LBJ School of Public Affair
Recommended from our members
From growth-based to people-centered : how Chinese leaders have modified their governing strategies to sustain legitimacy in the reform era
Get PDFtextThis dissertation analyzes changes in the ruling strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the context of economic reforms, beginning in 1978. By employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, this dissertation investigates how Chinese leaders have utilized legitimating strategies, while modifying their governing strategies, in order to a) solidify the population, b) consolidate ruling authority and c) maintain political and social stability. Specifically, this dissertation looks at how Chinese policymakers have developed effective public policies in response to rapidly rising wage inequality, one of the most pressing problems undermining the CCP’s ruling authority. By providing an original estimate of China’s wage inequality and analyzing the government’s response to it, this dissertation provides a unique look at how the CCP has transformed government functions from growth-based to people-centered to meet various social, political and economic challenges. A comparative statistical analysis helps illustrate the philosophical roots and sources of the CCP’s political legitimacy. The technique of Theil Statistics is applied to measure China’s wage inequality during the reform period. A multivariate hierarchical regression analysis is employed to measure the impact of rising inequality on Chinese society. Two models on social welfare system reform are studied in order to understand Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao’s people-centered governing philosophy and the rationale for constructing a service-oriented government.Public Affair
Recommended from our members
Kicking down the firewall : an examination of the leadership decisions behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
Get PDFtextThe late 1990's was a time of great wealth and prosperity in the United States. With this economic fervor came a new era of deregulation of the financial services industry. During this time, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, otherwise referred to as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GBLA). This law removed the final barrier (contained in Depression-era Glass-Steagall legislation) between mixing investment banking and commercial banking in the United States. The purpose of this report is to explain the intentions of the law's supporters and detractors, to discuss why this period was a particularly ripe time for such a policy, to examine the leadership decisions that contributed to the passage of GLBA, and to understand the motives behind a "new Glass-Steagall" bill today. This paper focuses only on the deregulatory parts of GLBA relevant to Glass-Steagall's repeal. It does not examine the privacy protections, et al. of GLBA at any length. Also contained in the analysis is a brief discussion of whether GLBA's stated intentions have been violated through the mixing of banking and commerce that has emerged in the present day. Finally, this report ends with a discussion on the fidelity of our national debate on banking regulation, and what it means for the federal government to manage risk in American financial markets in support of the public interest.Public Affair
- …
