Income inequality: The consequences of skill-upgrading when firms have hierarchical organisational structures

During the last three decades, most developed countries have experienced increasing income inequality. Using Danish register data from 1992 to 2007 for all private-sector employees, we confirm that income inequality has increased in Denmark. We also observe an increase in the relative employment of highly-educated individuals, as well as differential income growth rates across employee subgroups where, in particular, managers experienced significant real income progression. We use an equilibrium search framework with on-the-job search to derive the income distribution. In this model we can determine the management and education premia. We can also show that when our model is exposed to skill-upgrading it is capable of producing income dynamics similar to those observed in the Danish income distribution. (JEL J3, J6, M5

Mapping household direct energy consumption in the United Kingdom to provide a new perspective on energy justice

Targets for reductions in carbon emissions and energy use are often framed solely in terms of percentage reductions. However, the amount of energy used by households varies greatly, with some using considerably more than others and, therefore, potentially being able to make a bigger contribution towards overall reductions. Using two recently released UK datasets based on combined readings from over 70 million domestic energy meters and vehicle odometers, we present exploratory analyses of patterns of direct household energy usage. Whilst much energy justice work has previously focussed on energy vulnerability, mainly in low consumers, our findings suggest that a minority of areas appear to be placing much greater strain on energy networks and environmental systems than they need. Households in these areas are not only the most likely to be able to afford energy efficiency measures to reduce their impacts, but are also found to have other capabilities that would allow them to take action to reduce consumption (such as higher levels of income, education and particular configurations of housing type and tenure). We argue that these areas should therefore be a higher priority in the targeting of policy interventions

The shape of Fraught – urban – rural – the nation-state: tensions and dynamics

I argue that the tension between cities and nation states go through the countryside, or rural areas, at least in the U.S. Further, cities are decidedly constrained in their abilities to effectuate many of the changes associated with them: addressing climate change, economic inequality and more. What is missing is the way in which rural alienation from economic prosperity plays out politically

NAPLAN and the role of edu-business: new governance, new privatisations and new partnerships in Australian education policy

This paper provides a critical analysis of the edu-businesses currently working in partnership with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to deliver the Commonwealth government policy initiative of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These emerging public–private partnerships (PPPs) exemplify new heterarchical governance structures in Australia, where a network of public and private agents now contribute to education policy processes. In analysing the NAPLAN policy network, this account seeks to proffer a critical analysis on the evolving PPPs in Australia and ascertains in whose interests and with what outcomes these PPPs operate. The NAPLAN policy network is analysed in relation to the contemporary state and its changing modus operandi, in which I draw on the notions of heterarchies, networks and new governance structures in education to understand these developments. Network ethnography is employed to document the network of PPPs that are associated with NAPLAN and other government initiatives in Australia, and in particular, I reflect on the activities of Pearson and the Australian Council for Educational Research to problematise what these policy networks mean

Apocalypse Now, Never … or Forever: Venter and Medalie on the Everyday Politics of Post-Apartheid South Africa

This article undertakes an analysis of the narrative temporalities and of the narratives of temporality, specifically those of apocalypse or end-times and of living-on respectively, to be found in two recent South African novels, Eben Venter’s Trencherman (2008) and David Medalie’s The Shadow Follows (2006). Against Venter’s hyperbolic narrative of catastrophe, which also turns out to be a critique of the residual elements of the erstwhile apartheid era, I posit that Medalie’s litotic and patchwork narrative offers a more appropriate narrative of the slow transformation of the post-apartheid South African polity. I use Venter’s and Medalie’s oddly complementary novels as a template for exploring an emergent sense of a non-teleological ‘minor narrative’ of liberation in a time ‘after postcoloniality’.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reia202016-07-31hb201