Economic Inequality in Spain: The European Union Household Panel Dataset

This article uses data from the 1998 European Union Household Panel to study economic inequality in Spain. It reports data on the Spanish distributions of income, labor income, and capital income, and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the income mobility of Spanish households. We find that income, earnings, and, very especially, capital income are very unequally distributed in Spain

Estimating economies of scale and scope with flexible technology

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11123-016-0467-1Economies of scope are typically modelled and estimated using a cost function that is common to all firms in an industry irrespective of their type, e.g. whether they specialize in a single output or produce multiple outputs. Instead, we estimate a flexible technology model that allows for type-specific technologies and show how it can be estimated using linear parametric forms including the translog. A common technology remains a special case of our model and is testable econometrically. Our sample, of publicly owned US electric utilities, does not support a common technology for integrated and specialized firms. Our empirical results therefore suggest that assuming a common technology might bias estimates of economies of scale and scope. Thus, how we model the production technology clearly influences the policy conclusions we draw from its characteristics

Are Relative-Income Effects Constant Across the Well-Being Distribution?

This paper challenges the common assumption made by economists to date that income comparisons are similarly important in different segments of the subjective well-being (SWB) distribution. The results, based on the 2000-2007 waves of the German SOEP and on a Generalized Ordered Probit for panel data, show that relative income, as measured either by the mean income of the reference group or the individual ordinal ranking within the group, exerts a differential effect across SWB levels. Such divergence is assessed by means of the tradeoff ratio between household income and the relative income variables. The results show that a low rank and falling below the average income in one's group are significant determinants of low SWB but largely irrelevant when accounting for high SWB. The fact that conditionally unhappy individuals are more sensitive to comparisons, particularly if they are unfavorable, is consistent with earlier laboratory studies in the field of psychology

“Segeda Project”: the I.T. management of the territory of a Celtiberian city-state

This article defends the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the management, analysis, examination and modelling of the archaeological data concerning the territory. Within this context, we outline some types of analyses that are being carried out with the use of GIS applied to the case of Segeda. Drawing on these and other experiments, we conclude that GIS technologies and their well-established capacity for the integration, analysis and examination of information from different sources constitute a particularly effective tool for the modelling of complex realities such as the one we are concerned with in our project

Within-groups wage inequality and schooling: further evidence for Portugal

This article provides further evidence on the positive impact of schooling on within-groups wage dispersion in Portugal, using data on male workers from the 2001 wave of the European Community Household Panel. The issue of schooling endogeneity is taken into account by using the latest available instrumental-variable technique for quantile regression, i.e. the control-function estimator due to Lee (2007). The findings are compared with earlier results based on different techniques, i.e. the instrumental-variable estimator due to Arias et al. (2001) and the standard exogeneity-based estimator due to Koenker and Bassett (1978).

Schooling and the distribution of wages in the European private and public sectors

International research has shown that schooling enhances within-groups wage dispersion. This assessment is typically based on private sector data and, up to date, the inequality implications of schooling have not been documented for the public sector. This article uses recent data from eight European countries to explicitly take into account differences between the private and public sectors. Using quantile regression, the article describes the effects of schooling on the location and shape of the conditional wage distribution in each sector. While the average impact of schooling on wages is similar across sectors, the impact of schooling on within-groups dispersion is found to be substantially larger in the private sector than in the public sector. This finding warns that the effects of the European educational expansion on overall within-groups dispersion may be lower than previously thought.

Updated Facts on the U.S. Distributions of Earnings, Income and Wealth

This article uses data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances and from recent waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to update a study of economic inequality in the United States based on 1992 and earlier data. The article reports data on the U.S. distributions of earnings, income, and wealth and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the economic inequality among U.S. households in financial trouble and on the economic mobility of U.S. households. The article finds that earnings, income, and wealth were very unequally distributed among U.S. households late in the 1990s, just as they had been at the beginning of the decade. It concludes that the basic facts about economic inequality in the United States did not change much during the 1990s.Publicad

Economic inequality in Spain: the european community household panel dataset

Inequality, Income distribution, Labor earnings distribution, Capital income distribution,

A dynamic Mincer equation with an application to Portuguese data

This article argues in favour of a dynamic specification of the Mincer equation, where the past observed earnings play the role of additional explanatory variable for current observed earnings. A dynamic approach offers an explanation why the return to schooling in terms of observed earnings is not independent of labour-market experience, as suggested by some recent empirical evidence for the United States.