Redistribution Through Public Employment

Redistribution Through Public Employment PDF Author: Mr.Alberto Alesina
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 145185885X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 45

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Book Description
This paper examines the regional distribution of public employment in Italy and documents two sets of facts. The first is the use of public employment as a subsidy from the North to the less wealthy South. We calculate that about half of the wage bill in the South of Italy can be identified as a subsidy, with both the size of public employment and wage levels used as a redistributive device. The second set of facts concerns the negative effects of subsidized public employment on individuals’ attitudes toward job search, education, and “risk-taking” activities. We conclude that heavy reliance on public employment distorts incentives and discourages the development of market activities in the South.

Redistribution Through Public Employment

Redistribution Through Public Employment PDF Author: Mr.Alberto Alesina
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 145185885X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 45

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Book Description
This paper examines the regional distribution of public employment in Italy and documents two sets of facts. The first is the use of public employment as a subsidy from the North to the less wealthy South. We calculate that about half of the wage bill in the South of Italy can be identified as a subsidy, with both the size of public employment and wage levels used as a redistributive device. The second set of facts concerns the negative effects of subsidized public employment on individuals’ attitudes toward job search, education, and “risk-taking” activities. We conclude that heavy reliance on public employment distorts incentives and discourages the development of market activities in the South.

Redistribution Through Public Employment

Redistribution Through Public Employment PDF Author: Alberto Alesina
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civil service
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description


The Redistribution Recession

The Redistribution Recession PDF Author: Casey B. Mulligan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199996423
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Redistribution, or subsidies and regulations intended to help the poor, unemployed, and financially distressed, have changed in many ways since the onset of the recent financial crisis. The unemployed, for instance, can collect benefits longer and can receive bonuses, health subsidies, and tax deductions, and millions more people have became eligible for food stamps. Economist Casey B. Mulligan argues that while many of these changes were intended to help people endure economic events and boost the economy, they had the unintended consequence of deepening-if not causing-the recession. By dulling incentives for people to maintain their own living standards, redistribution created employment losses according to age, skill, and family composition. Mulligan explains how elevated tax rates and binding minimum-wage laws reduced labor usage, consumption, and investment, and how they increased labor productivity. He points to entire industries that slashed payrolls while experiencing little or no decline in production or revenue, documenting the disconnect between employment and production that occurred during the recession. The book provides an authoritative, comprehensive economic analysis of the marginal tax rates implicit in public and private sector subsidy programs, and uses quantitative measures of incentives to work and their changes over time since 2007 to illustrate production and employment patterns. It reveals the startling amount of work incentives eroded by the labyrinth of new and existing social safety net program rules, and, using prior results from labor economics and public finance, estimates that the labor market contracted two to three times more than it would have if redistribution policies had remained constant. In The Redistribution Recession, Casey B. Mulligan offers hard evidence to contradict the notion that work incentives suddenly stop mattering during a recession or when interest rates approach zero, and offers groundbreaking interpretations and precise explanations of the interplay between unemployment and financial markets.

Public Versus Private Production Decisions

Public Versus Private Production Decisions PDF Author: Jukka Pirttila
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We analyze the decision rules governing public employment policy, capital allocation between private and public sector, and the size of the public sector in a two-type and two-sector optimal nonlinear income-tax model with endogenous wages. The government can reduce wage inequality in the private sector by employing more unskilled workers and fewer skilled workers than is necessary to minimize cost at the prevailing gross wage rate and, if skilled labor and capital are complementary, by favoring public-sector capital accumulation. Therefore, production efficiency holds neither in public employment decision nor in capital allocation. The effects of public employment and investment on income inequality increase when the size of the public sector increases. The optimal size of the public sector is also shown to be relatively large when public employment and investments reduce wage inequality. These results help explain the growth in the public-sector size and why a larger government does not necessarily hamper growth.

State Distribution of Public Employment in ...

State Distribution of Public Employment in ... PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civil service
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description


Redistributive Public Employment

Redistributive Public Employment PDF Author: Alberto Alesina
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Income distribution
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
Politicians may use disguised' redistributive policies in order to circumvent opposition to explicit tax-transfer schemes. First, we present a theoretical model that formalizes this hypothesis; then we provide evidence that in US cities, politicians use public employment as such a redistributive device. We find that city employment is significantly higher in cities where income inequality and ethnic fragmentation are higher.

Macroeconomic Policy and a Living Wage

Macroeconomic Policy and a Living Wage PDF Author: Donald R. Stabile
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030019985
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This book offers a new interpretation of the Employment Act of 1946. It argues that in addition to Keynesian economics, the idea of a living wage was also part of the background leading up to the Employment Act. The Act mandated that the president prepare an Economic Report on the state of the economy and how to improve it, and the idea of a living wage was an essential issue in those Economic Reports for over two decades. The author argues that macroeconomic policy in the USA consisted of a dual approach of using a living wage to increase consumption with higher wages, and fiscal policy to create jobs and higher levels of consumption, therefore forming a hybrid system of redistributive economics. An important read for scholars of economic history, this book explores Roosevelt’s role in the debates over the Employment Act in the 1940s, and underlines how Truman’s Fair Deal, Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society all had the ultimate goal of a living wage, despite their variations of its definition and name.

What Drives Public Employment?

What Drives Public Employment? PDF Author: Dani Rodrik
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civil service
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
Excessive levels of government employment is one of the most frequent complaints made about public-sector governance in developing economies. The explanation typically offered is that governments have used public-sector employment as a tool for generating and redistributing rents. This paper suggests an alternative hypothesis for government employment practices: relatively safe government jobs represent partial insurance against undiversifiable external risk faced by the domestic economy. By providing a larger number of secure' jobs in the public sector, a government can counteract the income and consumption risk faced by the households in the economy. I show that countries that are greatly exposed to external risk have higher levels of government employment and have experienced faster rates of growth of government consumption. The basic finding on the (partial) correlation between government employment and exposure to external risk is robust against the alternative hypothesis that government employment has been driven by considerations of rent-seeking and rent distribution

Inequality and Optimal Redistribution

Inequality and Optimal Redistribution PDF Author: Hannu Tanninen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108654819
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
From the 1980s onward income inequality increased in many advanced countries. It is very difficult to account for the rise in income inequality using the standard labour supply/demand explanation. Fiscal redistribution has become less effective in compensating increasing inequalities since the 1990s. Some of the basic features of redistribution can be explained through the optimal tax framework developed by J.A. Mirrlees in 1971. This Element surveys some of the earlier results in linear and nonlinear taxation and produces some new numerical results. Given the key role of capital income in the overall income inequality it also considers the optimal taxation of capital income. It examines empirically the relationship between the extent of redistribution and the components of the Mirrlees framework. The redistributive role of factors such as publicly provided private goods, public employment, endogenous wages in the overlapping generations model and income uncertainty are analysed.

Local Redistribution and Local Democracy

Local Redistribution and Local Democracy PDF Author: Clayton P. Gillette
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300125658
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
DIVThe traditional theory of urban finance argues against local redistribution of wealth on the assumption that such action is likely to chase away the relatively wealthy, leaving only the impoverished behind. Nevertheless, Clayton P. Gillette observes, local governments engage in substantial redistribution, both to the wealthy and to the poor. In this thoughtful book, Gillette examines whether recent campaigns to enact "living wage" ordinances and other local redistributive programs represent gaps in the traditional theory or political opportunism. He then investigates the role of the courts in distinguishing between these explanations. The author argues that courts have greater capacity to review local programs than is typically assumed. He concludes that when a single interest group dominates the political process, judicial intervention to determine a program's legal validity may be appropriate. But if the political contest involves competing groups, courts should defer to local political judgments. /div