-
作者：Bisin, A; Verdier, T
作者单位：New York University; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole des Ponts ParisTech; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole des Ponts ParisTech
摘要：We study the formation of preferences for 'social status' as the result of intergenerational transmission of cultural traits. We characterize the behavior of parents with preferences for status in terms of socialization of their children to this particular cultural trait. We show that degenerate distributions of the population (whereby agents have either all status preferences or all non-status preferences) are dynamically unstable. Moreover, under some conditions, there exists a unique statio...
-
作者：Glomm, G; Lagunoff, R
作者单位：Michigan State University; Georgetown University
摘要：We study whether 'coercive' public provision or voluntary private provision of public goods can survive when individuals who 'vote with their feet' can choose between communities that differ in the way that public goods are provided. We obtain the following findings: (i) an equilibrium always exists in which all individuals migrate to the community which uses voluntary provision; (ii) under very robust conditions on preferences and income distribution, an equilibrium exists in which all indivi...
-
作者：Piketty, T
摘要：Human beings care a lot about being viewed as 'smart'. This paper defines social status as the public beliefs about one's 'smartness' inferred from one's publicly observed social mobility experience. This status motive can easily generate multiple equilibria based upon self-fulfilling beliefs. It also tends to amplify the inequality of economic success between agents with different social origins. This theory of persistent inequality is compared with other theories of inequality based upon sel...
-
作者：Arnott, R; Kraus, M
作者单位：Boston College
摘要：There are constraints on pricing congestible facilities. First, if heterogeneous users are observationally indistinguishable, then congestion charges must be anonymous. Second, the time variation of congestion charges may be constrained. Do these constraints undermine the feasibility of marginal cost pricing, and hence the applicability of the first-best theory of congestible facilities? For an important class of congestible facilities, we show that if heterogeneous users behave identically wh...
-
作者：Salas, R
作者单位：Complutense University of Madrid
摘要：This note explores the performance of the welfare-based inequality indices under changing populations. We define the marginal population replication axiom, which implies that if we measure inequality in a H households economy and it merges an extra household with the equally-distributed equivalent income of the previous distribution, then social welfare should not change (and therefore inequality should be reduced). Classical relative inequality Atkinson indices satisfy this axiom and therefor...
-
作者：Haufler, A
作者单位：University of Konstanz
摘要：A widely noticed result by de Crombrugghe and Tulkens (Journal of Public Economics 41 (1990) 335-350) states that asymmetric commodity tax competition always leads to tax rates being too low in both countries, even though there are counteracting private and public consumption effects for the high-tax region. This note argues that the result depends crucially on the assumption that welfare in the high-tax region is concave in the tax rate of the low-tax country and shows that this assumption ca...
-
作者：Chiu, WH; Madden, P
作者单位：University of Manchester
摘要：In a model where risk-neutral agents have differing (legal) incomes which may be supplemented by burglary, we study the effects of income distribution on the level of burglary. Assuming that a detected burglar is incarcerated for a fixed term, and assuming that burglars choose target houses using the signal of house quality, we show how increases in income inequality may increase the level of crime. In particular, increases in 'relative differential' inequality, unambiguously increase burglary...
-
作者：Cole, HL; Mailath, GJ; Postlewaite, A
作者单位：University of Pennsylvania; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis
摘要：We analyze a model in which there is socially inefficient competition among people. In this model, self-enforcing social norms can potentially control the inefficient competition. However, the inefficient behavior often cannot be suppressed in equilibrium among those with the lowest income due to the ineffectiveness of sanctions against those in the society with the least to lose. We demonstrate that, in such cases, it may be possible for society to be divided into distinct classes, with ineff...
-
作者：Bernasconi, M
作者单位：University of Pavia
摘要：The classic Allingham and Sandmo's (Journal of Public Economics, 1 (1972) 323-338) portfolio choice approach to income tax evasion has been increasingly criticised because it requires an 'excess' degree of risk aversion to explain the observed rate of tax compliance. In this paper we argue that there may not necessarily be 'excess risk aversion'; and that the evidence can be explained by the distinction between orders of risk aversion, as defined by Segal and Spivak (Journal of Economic Theory...
-
作者：Neumark, D; Postlewaite, A
作者单位：University of Pennsylvania; Michigan State University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We ask whether women's decisions to be in the workforce may be affected by the decisions of other women in ways not captured by standard models. We develop a model that augments the simple neoclassical framework by introducing relative income concerns into women's (or families') utility functions. In this model, the entry of some women into paid employment can spur the entry of other women, independently of wage and income effects. We show that relative income concerns can help to explain why,...
