Finance and Income Inequality: What Do the Data Tell Us?

Although there are distinct conjectures about the relationship between finance and income inequality, little empirical research compares their explanatory power. We examine the relationship between finance and income inequality for 83 countries between 1960 and 1995. Because financial development might be endogenous, we use instruments from the literature on law, finance, and growth to control for this. Our results suggest that, in the long run, inequality is less when financial development is greater, consistent with Galor and Zeira (1993) and Banerjee and Newman (1993). Although the results also suggest that inequality might increase as financial sector development increases at very low levels of financial sector development, as suggested by Greenwood and Jovanovic (1990), this result is not robust. We reject the hypothesis that financial development benefits only the rich. Our results thus suggest that in addition to improving growth, financial development also reduces inequality.

The Profundity of Polychoralism: Exploring the work of Jonathan David Little [Interview and CD review]

Extended (7000-word) composer interview and CD review of "Woefully Arrayed: Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Music of Jonathan David Little", by London-based international music critic, Colin Clarke. [INTERVIEW:] "The disc of sacred and secular choral and polychoral music by Jonathan David Little, Woefully Arrayed … is nothing short of remarkable. Stunningly recorded, the pure sonic joy is visceral. On a personal level, I haven’t experienced such revelation in choral terms since the Tallis Scholars’ first recording of the Allegri Miserere. As an interviewee, it turns out, Little is every inch as fascinating as his music. The following in-depth interview may be seen as an indispensable complement to the listening experience itself." [CD REVIEW:] "Jonathan David Little is a composer whose music is vital, urgent and yet somehow timeless at the same time. … Woefully Arrayed has a mesmeric element to it … [and] is a masterpiece of time-stretching. As lines float and interact throughout the soundspace, there is a distinct impression of atemporality, of altering the way the listener experiences time. … sound is superb, full and reverberant … magnificently handled … A superb disc, one that simply gets better on each and every listening. There is a radiance to Little’s writing that seems shot through with spiritual light and which speaks on a very deep level to the listener." PROJECT OVERVIEW: International Polychoral Music Composition, Recording and Dissemination Project (2015-17) “The lost potential of the acoustics of performing spaces begins to be rediscovered in these works.” A complex and ambitious, large-scale, two-year “polychoral” music creation and recording project was commissioned by the Australia Council – involving communicating how “re-discovered” ancient Renaissance and Baroque techniques of acoustically-innovative performer placement may be revived within new, original, contemporary contexts. One aim was to generate interest in largely long-forgotten, but still hugely useful and aurally impressive composition methods. Following a period of research and experimentation, several new, accessible choral works were created – most featuring intricate, a cappella, polychoral-inspired techniques. Therefore different sections of the choir, or different “sub-choirs” and/or vocal soloists, are sometimes placed in various arrangements around and above the audience (occasionally also involving movement). Due to the incorporation of such techniques, a striking extra dimension is added both to recordings and live performances – where the aural “spatial” interest creates a quasi-theatrical effect. OPEN-ACCESS ONLINE CD BOOKLET (including contextual essay, spatial configuration diagrams, lyrics, pictures and notes): http://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6113/booklet---woefully-arrayed---jonathan-little.htm

Privatization, competition and corruption: How characteristics of bribe takers and payers after bribe payments to utilities

Many recent studies have looked at the macroeconomic, cultural and institutional determinants of corruption at the cross-national level. This study complements these existing cross-country studies by focusing on firm-level evidence of microeconomic factors affecting bribes paid in a single sector of the economy. Using enterprise-level data on bribes paid to utilities in 21 transition economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, we examine how characteristics of the utilities taking bribes and the firms paying bribes affect the equilibrium level of corruption in the sector. Bribe takers (utility employees) are more likely to take bribes in countries with greater constraints on utility capacity, lower levels of competition in the utility sector, and where utilities are state-owned. Bribe payers (enterprises) are more likely to pay bribes when they are more profitable, have greater overdue payment to utilities, and are de novo private firms. A thorny issue in the empirical literature on corruption is how to distinguish between the "endogenous harassment" and "speed money" theories of corruption. The former receives stronger support from some of the results than the latter

Resolution of Key Roles for the Distal Pocket Histidine in Cytochrome c Nitrite Reductases

Cytochrome c nitrite reductases perform a key step in the biogeochemical N-cycle by catalyzing the six-electron reduction of nitrite to ammonium. These multi-heme cytochromes contain a number of His/His ligated c-hemes for electron transfer and a structurally differentiated heme that provides the catalytic center. The catalytic heme has proximal ligation from lysine, or histidine, and an exchangeable distal ligand bound within a pocket that includes a conserved histidine. Here we describe properties of a penta-heme cytochrome c nitrite reductase in which the distal His has been substituted by Asn. The variant is unable to catalyze nitrite reduction despite retaining the ability to reduce a proposed intermediate in that process, namely, hydroxylamine. A combination of electrochemical, structural and spectroscopic studies reveals that the variant enzyme simultaneously binds nitrite and electrons at the catalytic heme. As a consequence the distal His is proposed to play a key role in orienting the nitrite for N-O bond cleavage. The electrochemical experiments also reveal that the distal His facilitates rapid nitrite binding to the catalytic heme of the native enzyme. Finally it is noted that the thermodynamic descriptions of nitrite- and electron-binding to the active site of the variant enzyme are modulated by the prevailing oxidation states of the His/His ligated hemes. This is behavior that is likely to be displayed by other multi-centered redox enzymes such that there are wide implications for considering the determinants of catalytic activity in this important and varied group of oxidoreductases

Finance and income inequality : test of alternative theories

Although theoretical models make distinct predictions about the relationship between financial sector development and income inequality, little empirical research has been conducted to compare their relative explanatory power. The authors examine the relation between financial intermediary development and income inequality in a panel data set of 91 countries for the period 1960-95. Their results provide evidence that inequality decreases as economies develop their financial intermediaries, consistent with the theoretical models in Galor and Zeira (1993) and Banerjee and Newman (1993). Moreover, consistent with the insight of Kuznets, the relation between the Gini coefficient and financial intermediary development appears to depend on the sectoral structure of the economy: a larger modern sector is associated with a smaller drop in the Gini coefficient for the same level of financial intermediary development. But there is no evidence of an inverted-U-shaped relation between financial sector development and income inequality, as suggested by Greenwood and Jovanovic (1990). The results are robust to controlling for biases introduced by simultaneity.Poverty Impact Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Inequality,Economic Theory&Research,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance

New tools for studying network industry reforms in developing countries : the telecommunications and electricity regulation database

Infrastructure industries-including telecommunications, electricity, water, and gas-underwent massive structural changes in the 1990s. During that decade, hundreds of privatization transactions valued at billions of dollars were completed in these sectors in developing and transition economies. While privatization has received the most attention, reforms also included market liberalization, structural changes like unbundling, and the introduction of new laws and regulations. To date, regulations have received far less attention than their potential economic effects warrant, largely due to lack of data. In order to address this problem, the authors set out to compile a comprehensive and consistent dataset through an extensive survey of telecommunications and electricity regulators in developing countries. The authors describe the surveys and the resulting database. The database of telecommunications regulations includes 178 variables on regulatory governance and content in 45 countries. The database of electricity regulations includes 374 variables in 20 countries.Administrative&Regulatory Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Trade Finance and Investment,ICT Policy and Strategies,ICT Policy and Strategies,Administrative&Regulatory Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance

New Tools for Studying Network Industry Reforms in Developing Countries: The Telecommunications and Electricity Regulation Database

Infrastructure industries including telecommunications, electricity, water, and gas underwent massive structural changes during the 1990s. During that decade, hundreds of privatization transactions valued at billions of dollars were completed in these sectors in developing and transitional economies. While privatization has received the most attention, reforms also included market liberalization, structural changes like unbundling, and the introduction of new laws and regulations. To date, regulations have received far less attention than their potential economic effects warrant, largely due to lack of data. In order to address this problem, we set out to compile an extensive, comprehensive, and consistent dataset through an extensive survey of telecommunications and electricity regulators in developing countries. Our database of telecommunications regulations includes 178 variables on regulatory governance and content in 45 countries. Our database of electricity regulations includes 374 variables in 20 countries.

Sparse Positional Strategies for Safety Games

We consider the problem of obtaining sparse positional strategies for safety games. Such games are a commonly used model in many formal methods, as they make the interaction of a system with its environment explicit. Often, a winning strategy for one of the players is used as a certificate or as an artefact for further processing in the application. Small such certificates, i.e., strategies that can be written down very compactly, are typically preferred. For safety games, we only need to consider positional strategies. These map game positions of a player onto a move that is to be taken by the player whenever the play enters that position. For representing positional strategies compactly, a common goal is to minimize the number of positions for which a winning player's move needs to be defined such that the game is still won by the same player, without visiting a position with an undefined next move. We call winning strategies in which the next move is defined for few of the player's positions sparse. Unfortunately, even roughly approximating the density of the sparsest strategy for a safety game has been shown to be NP-hard. Thus, to obtain sparse strategies in practice, one either has to apply some heuristics, or use some exhaustive search technique, like ILP (integer linear programming) solving. In this paper, we perform a comparative study of currently available methods to obtain sparse winning strategies for the safety player in safety games. We consider techniques from common knowledge, such as using ILP or SAT (satisfiability) solving, and a novel technique based on iterative linear programming. The results of this paper tell us if current techniques are already scalable enough for practical use.Comment: In Proceedings SYNT 2012, arXiv:1207.055

The impact and effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccination in Scotland for those aged 65 and over during winter 2003/2004

For winter 2003/2004 in Scotland, it was recommended that all those aged 65 and over be eligible to receive 23-valent polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine (23vPPV), which has been shown to be effective in reducing the risk of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). We assessed the success of the vaccination programme by examining the age specific incidence rates of IPD compared to four previous winter seasons and estimating vaccination effectiveness