Household inequality, social welfare, and trade

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Francois, Joseph; Rojas-Romagosa, Hugo
• 署名单位: Johannes Kepler University Linz; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2010.08.006
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 422-431
• 关键词: Sen welfare functions; Trade and equity; Equity and welfare in general equilibrium; Equity in CGE

摘要

Working with Sen social welfare functions (meaning explicit separability between mean income and income dispersion), we develop a generalized dual approach to tracking household inequality aspects of social welfare in general equilibrium. We highlight how household equity can be examined analytically alongside production efficiency in duality-based models, using our dual framework to explore potential trade-offs between efficiency and equity effects of trade policy. Our results complement the set of standard inequality results in trade theory focused on functional rather than household inequality. We also find that the relative distributional impact of tariffs on welfare is conditional on the initial level of inequality. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.