Publications
Recent decades have witnessed a rising interest in the measurement of inequality from a multidimensional perspective. This literature has however remained largely theoretical. This chapter presents an empirical application of a recent methodology and in doing so offers practical insights on how multidimensional inequality can be measured over two attributes (wealth and health) in the developing country context. Following Abul Naga and Geoffard (2006), a methodological framework allowing the decomposition of multidimensional inequality into two univariate Atkinson–Kolm–Sen equality indices and a third term measuring the association between the attributes is implemented. The methodology is then illustrated using data from the World Health Surveys 2002–2003. Specifically, this study presents the first comparative analysis on multidimensional inequality for a set of Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. Results reveal that the multidimensional (in-)equality indices tend to mimic the (in-)equality ordering of the wealth distributions as the latter are always less equally distributed than health. An empirical conclusion that emerges is that reducing the correlation between the attributes may help to reduce overall welfare inequality, specifically when socioeconomic inequality in health is pro-poor. The finding that the correlation between attributes has a significant contribution in the quantification of inequality has important policy implications since it reveals that it is not only wealth and health inequalities per se that matter in the measurement of welfare inequality but also the associations between them.
We analyze a two country-two good model of international trade in which citizens in each country differ by their specific factor endowments. The trade policy in each country is set by the politician who has been elected by the citizens in a previous stage. Due to a delegation effect citizens generally favor candidates who are more protectionist than they are. The one-candidate-per-country equilibria exhibit a "protectionist drift" owing to this delegation effect. In addition, we find an additional source of protectionist drift that we call the "abstention effect". Not only do candidates wish to delegate to more protectionist colleagues, but these more protectionist colleagues who can win election, prefer still more protectionist candidates than themselves. Therefore, they have an incentive to abstain, that is, not run for election. We show that because of this abstention effect there exists a range of electable citizens all of whom are more protectionist than the median voter's most preferred candidate. We extend the analysis allowing two-candidate equilibria and the possibility that there are costs and benefits of holding office.
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The chapter begins by briefly describing two contrasting simulations: the iconic system dynamics model publicised under the “Limits to Growth” book and a detailed model of 1st millennium Native American societies in the south west of the US. These are used to bring out the issues of: abstraction, replicability, model comprehensibility, understanding vs. prediction, and the extent to which simulations go beyond what is observed. These issues and difficulties result in three “dimensions” in which simulation approaches differ. These issues are each rooted in some fundamental difficulties in the project of simulating observed societies that are then briefly discussed. The core of the chapter is a look at 15 different possible simulation goals, both abstract and concrete, giving some examples of each and discussing them. The different inputs and results from such simulations are briefly discussed as to their importance for simulating human societies. The chapter ends with a brief critical assessment of the state of the art in terms of using simulation techniques for helping to understand human societies.
ouvrage en hommage à C.A. Michalet
Où la mondialisation conduit-elle l'économie? Pour tenter de répondre à cette question, les auteurs prolongent ici les intuitions de l'économiste Charles-Albert Michalet en analysant les espaces de la mondialisation : la finance globale, les bourses de valeurs, le commerce mondial - cet « impérialisme à l'envers » -, les pressions protectionnistes européennes ainsi que la globalisation de la propriété intellectuelle. Il s'agit de comprendre également comment les principaux acteurs de la mondialisation, les États et les Firmes, dépassent et entretiennent la crise. En effet, la concurrence que se font les États pour attirer les investisseurs étrangers nourrit cette crise malgré les politiques nationales d'innovation. De leur côté, les Firmes qui inscrivent désormais leurs stratégies dans une recomposition mondiale de l'industrie et des services, accentuent les flux de délocalisation et de relocalisation des activités. Dans un même temps, de nouvelles Firmes originaires du « Sud » font irruption dans l'espace mondial. La force de travail doit ainsi s'adapter à une nouvelle donne qui va de la financiarisation des Firmes à l'individualisation des rémunérations.
