Income Distribution Commons^™

The Impact Of Guaranteed Income On Political Participation, Daniel Horn

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-paper dissertation examines the impact of guaranteed income (GI) and cash transfer (CT) programs on political participation, aiming to contribute to understanding how social policies can shape civic engagement. The first paper provides a comprehensive literature review on GI and CT programs, focusing on their potential effects on political participation. By analyzing existing studies, this paper identifies key findings and gaps in the literature, setting the stage for further empirical investigation. The second paper develops and tests a new instrument called the Brief Political Participation Scale (BPPS), designed to measure political participation concisely and reliably. The third paper presents …

Employer Power: Consequences For Wages, Inequality And Spillovers, Ihsaan Bassier

Doctoral Dissertations

In several countries, wages have stagnated and union membership declined, even as productivity has increased. The established view of employers helpless to the labor market's invisible hand has increasingly come under question. Attention has turned towards the power of employers to set wages; yet only recently have the data required to investigate this – observing workers at their employers – become available, and then mostly in richer countries. My first chapter, “Monopsony in Movers” (co-authored with Arindrajit Dube and Suresh Naidu), proposes a new credible estimation strategy to measure employer monopsony power. We build on the idea that employers with …

Constraining Labor's “Double Freedom”: Revisiting The Impact Of Wrongful Discharge Laws On Labor Markets, 1979-2014, Eric Hoyt

Doctoral Dissertations

I study the impact of wrongful discharge laws, a form of employment protection in the U.S., on union membership, wages, job tenure, and on-the-job training. There are several important contributions of this work to the previous social science research on the topic: First, I update the legal adoption dataset to 2014. Second, this is the first examination to date of the link between wrongful discharge laws and unions. Third, this is the first analysis that is able to include firm size controls in the investigation of the impact of wrongful discharge laws on wages. Finally, this analysis is the first …

The Role Of Social Class And Construal Level In Social Justice And Fairness Beliefs, Prerana Bharadwaj

Doctoral Dissertations

What predicts support for the redistribution of resources to improve socioeconomic inequality? Social class, or the subjective perception of one’s resources and position in relation to others in a larger society, was examined as one relevant characteristic. Across four experiments, social class as subjective social status was manipulated (two) and measured (all four), and found to have a significant negative effect on support for the moral values of group-based equality (social justice) but not on individual deservingness (fairness) separate from political identity and other demographic characteristics. This effect was seen on stated principles but particularly relevant in approval ratings of …

Three Essays On International Economics And Finance, Juan Antonio Montecino

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies the macroeconomic and social impacts of two increasingly common macroeconomic policies: restrictions on international capital mobility -- capital controls -- and so-called unconventional monetary policy -- often referred to as “quantitative easing.” The consensus view is that capital controls can effectively lengthen the maturity composition of capital inflows and increase the independence of monetary policy but are not generally effective at reducing net inflows and influencing the real exchange rate. The first essay presents empirical evidence that although capital controls may not directly affect the long-run equilibrium level of the real exchange rate, they may enable disequilibria …

Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm

Doctoral Dissertations

Chapter 1 of this dissertation focuses on the political economy of rent seeking. Using trading in financial markets, patent litigation and managerial privilege as descriptive examples from the modern economy, it identifies situations where rent seeking opportunities occur. The challenge of correctly distinguishing between productive activities and rent seeking activities demonstrate the empirical challenges of examining rent seeking. This chapter also suggests that in addition to the opportunity cost of physical capital, modern rent seeking has a significant opportunity cost in the form of the misallocation of human capital. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between increased rent seeking, aggregate demand, …

Essays On Household Health Expenditures, National Health Insurance And Universal Access To Health Care In Ghana, Evelyn Kwakye

Doctoral Dissertations

Access to quality health services is essential for maintaining a healthy population and economic development hence the growing global consensus that universal health coverage is necessary. Ghana attempts to expand access by making basic health services free at the point of delivery through its National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Prior studies indicate NHIS increases demand for health services, but questions remain about its impact on out of pocket payments, quality of services, and the financial viability of the program. Hence, this dissertation analyzes the financial risk in health care seeking, the effect of NHIS on out of pocket payments and …

Three Essays On Women's Land Rights In Rural Peru, Rosa L. Duran

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relationship between female land rights and cultural, policy, and regional variables, and asks to what degree, and in what ways, the highly contextual nature of the relationships between these variables have determined local-specific causes and effects of female land rights in Peru. This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay provides the socioeconomic and institutional context for the entire dissertation, introducing a brief historical account of the evolution of female land rights in Peru. This essay pays particular attention to the relationship between property rights and geographical context in the Peruvian countryside, examining the region-specific …

Essays On Inequality, Credit Constraints, And Growth In Contemporary Mexico, Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents four essays on inequality, credit constraints, and economic growth in the Mexican economy in its recent history, or “contemporary Mexico”. In the first essay, it is argued that the possibility that wealth/income inequality could affect economic growth has been neglected in the contemporary Mexican economy literature. Also, preliminary thoughts on the channels through which inequality could have been affecting growth are offered. In the second essay, a time series, macroeconometric analysis on the possible relationship between inequality and aggregate production (GDP) in Mexico is presented. The analysis suggests that an increase in inequality boosts the economy, but …

The Labor Share Question In China, Hao Qi

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I explore why China’s labor share measured by the conventional approach experienced a major decline over the period from the mid-1990s to the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008. I adopt a Marxian approach to address this question. Following the Marxian approach, I focus on how the power relation in the sphere of production affects labor’s share. I argue that major changes in the power relation that took place during the transition of China’s economic system have played a crucial role in the changes of distribution. To this end, I build homogenous series …

Economic Wealth And Social Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis Of Transnational Well-Being, Kelly Brooke Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

Macro changes in the financial arena have prompted ongoing research focused on global economic trends. As America emerges from an era of stagnant wages, rising unemployment, and growing class stratification it is necessary to explore differences in cross-national socioeconomic behavior to address the changing needs of our country. Many studies attempt to describe statistical correlations between economic wealth and social well-being domestically and abroad by utilizing methodological perspectives that do not account for longitudinal change. To address the gap in existing research, this study seeks to measure variations in econometric indicators between the U.S. and Nordic countries to further explicate …

Theory And Experiments Exploring Behavioral, Financial, And Public Economics, Matthew John Mcmahon

Doctoral Dissertations

I study three questions which relate to one another only in that each explores facets of economics. First, I theoretically examine the conditions under which introducing an impure public good decreases total public provision. I introduce a central planner who can tax the private good to correct this and identify the market characteristics that typify this scenario. Second, I test the two standard competing dividend puzzle hypotheses using a laboratory experiment. Evidence from the lab, including variables unobservable in the field, reinforces empirical work supporting the outcome model over the substitute. Last, I obscure from dictators information regarding recipients' income …

Productive Stagnation And Unproductive Accumulation In The United States, 1947-2011., Tomas N. Rotta

Doctoral Dissertations

My doctoral research addresses the question of how productive and unproductive forms of capital accumulation interact in the United States. My contribution is to first develop a new understanding of the labor theory of value in order to better explain how financial and rentier forms of revenues relate to the wealth created in productive activities. Second, I offer an innovative analysis of historical trends regarding unproductive accumulation in the postwar United States economy. For that purpose, I propose a new methodology to estimate Marxist categories from conventional input-output matrices, national income accounts, and employment data. A core feature of my …

Essays On The Evolution Of Inequality, Cem Oyvat

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the evolution of inequality during the development process. Specifically, the study will focus on two factors that crucially in influence the evolution of distribution: 1) industrialization and urbanization, and 2) agrarian structures and land inequality. The dissertation consists of three essays: The first essay examines the impact of the initial conditions of agrarian structures on income inequality over the long run. It develops a model showing that at the same level of national income, countries with more unequal land distribution can be expected to experience greater agglomeration in the urban sector. The excess labor in the urban …

Essays On Fiscal Policies In Open Economies, Ahiteme Nicodeme Houndonougbo

Doctoral Dissertations

Investigating various fiscal policy issues in the context of an open economy, this dissertation consists of three essays.

The first essay addresses the question of the volatility of foreign aid and its impact on resource-constrained developing economies. A small open-economy business cycle model is developed that accounts for the effect of external shocks specific to developing economies. The model produces business cycle patterns consistent with the data and key stylized facts. The model is calibrated to reflect the structural empirical regularities of an aid-dependent developing country. The parameters of the exogenous stochastic shocks are estimated using Bayesian methods and 50 …