Recent decades, growing trends in economic inequality have been observed across the world. While the underlying causes are many, there is a recent and growing field of research discussing the potential effects that changes in policy rates and other kinds of economic policy may have on economic inequality. While results among the existing pool of research varies, there seems to be a common perception that economic policy, and changes in policy rates in particular, does affect economic inequality. By conducting a panel data study of 34 countries over the course of 30 years, this thesis finds significant decreases in economic equality, measured using 3 different inequality measurements, following increases in the policy rate. The effects are similar in magnitude for all inequality measurements, however, due to the estimated effects being extremely small in relation to the context, the economic significance is initially questioned. By further analyzing the effects in terms of standard deviations, the thesis finds that estimated effects are of reasonable magnitude, and thus, the economic significance of the study is confirmed.

Economic inequality and its effects on income growth is a topic that has been researched extensively. Previous studies with the aim to determine the impact of income inequality on economic growth have functioned more as pointers than solid facts. This study contributes to the continued discussion within the growth economy by exploring the relationship between the growth rate of average income and income inequality using panel data of Swedish municipalities from 2000-2020. Produced independently, this study uses the Gini coefficient as a tool to measure the income inequality among all 290 municipalities in Sweden. The result from the panel estimation shows no clear effect on the impact of income inequalities on income growth. However, when endogeneity is considered a 2SLS regression with the age structure as an instrument variable is used, the estimation shows that income inequality at local level has a positive association to growth of average income. Coherent with earlier studies of income inequality among Swedish municipalities, the result implies that as income inequality increases between income groups, average municipality experiences increase in growth of average income. Furthermore, this disposition compares the estimated results to a system GMM estimation.

Global warming continues to have a negative effect on the environment and, by extension, the economy. Incidence of natural disasters are increasing because of climate change, with flooding being one of the most common and costly types of disaster. Studies on the effect of floods on the economy have revealed that flooding increases the amount of income inequality. However, there is not a unified, qualitative analysis of the reasons for the post-flood increase in inequality. This thesis examines multiple different flood events in several developing countries to answer how flooding affects inequality in developing countries. It produces a synthesized analysis on the underlying causes of flood induced income inequality. These causes were found to be the increased vulnerability of low-income households to flooding and their lower capacity to cope with flood damages, relative to middle- or high-income households. Vulnerability has spatial and structural dimensions, and capacity to cope is influenced by a household’s asset portfolio and post-flood adaptation ability; it is also interconnected with coping capacity and contributes to a cycle of poverty escalation.

No description available.

Happiness is a well-researched and complex field of science. The complexity creates results that are diverse from study to study. Macro-economic variables such as income inequality, inflation and unemployment are frequently occurring. Because studies in happiness are diverse in their conclusions, we hypothesise that time-series regressions on separate western European countries will create different results. In order to find out if same macroeconomic variables affect nations average happiness differently. We created time-series regressions with robust standard errors between 1983-2020 for Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, and France separately. Using initially mentioned variables in order to determine their effects on average happiness, taken from Veenhoven´s World Database of Happiness, our results were as diverse as previous research. The only variable that displayed consensus in its effect was inflation. Income inequality (GINI) and unemployment rate depicts all possible hypothesis, negative, positive, and no correlation depending on nation. This indicates that every country might react differently and perhaps should not be bundled together and generalized. Future research needs to be conducted in similar manner as the time-series data increases, and to further analyze if happiness is a practical and nation-comparable measure of welfare.

La notion de pauvreté a fait l’objet de nombreux débats à travers le monde. Les premières analyses ont mis l’accent sur le caractère unidimensionnel basé essentiellement sur une approche monétaire (revenu ou dépense de consommation). C’est à la faveur des travaux de certains auteurs, tels que Townsend et Sen, que le caractère multidimensionnel est mis en lumière, au regard de la difficulté de quantification de certaines variables qui traduisaient l’idée de manque. l ressort des nombreuses études empiriques que le secteur rural reste le secteur le plus touché par le phénomène de pauvreté.Dans le cas de la Côte d’Ivoire, la pauvreté reste également un phénomène rural et la plupart des études réalisées se sont focalisées sur l’approche monétaire. Cette étude aborde l’analyse de la pauvreté en se focalisant sur le milieu rural agricole et appréhende le phénomène de la pauvreté à partir de trois (03) approches : (i) monétaire ; (ii) privation relative et (iii) patrimoine.Les résultats montrent que la pauvreté reste importante dans ce secteur avec un taux plus élevé pour l’indicateur de privation relative. En outre, il existe une inégalité monétaire plus importante que les autres types de pauvreté quel que soit l’année (2002 et 2008).L’identification des facteurs explicatifs de l’appartenance ou non à la classe des pauvres, montre que les variables liées au genre, au type de religion et à la classe d’âge sont les plus communes aux différentes années et aux différentes approches.Sur la base des résultats obtenus, les recommandations suivantes sont formulées : (i) à l’endroit du gouvernement ivoirien, utiliser les approches monétaires et non-monétaires dans les prochaines analyses sur la pauvreté en Côte d’Ivoire ; mettre l’accent sur la construction de nouvelles infrastructures et l’achat de nouveaux équipements ; améliorer la communication relatives aux actions du gouvernement ; renforcer les capacités des producteurs en matière d’utilisation d’intrants améliorés et d’outils pertinents ; (ii) à l’endroit des producteurs agricoles, adopter les technologies et techniques agricoles et des intrants de qualité, accepter d’adhérer à des entreprises coopératives ; (iii) à l’endroit des coopératives, il faut rechercher des débouchés pour ses membres, négocier de meilleures rémunérations des productions agricoles, transformer les agriculteurs en véritables entrepreneurs agricoles. / The notion of poverty has been the subject of much debate around the world. Previous analyses have emphasized the one-dimensional character based essentially on a monetary approach (income or consumption expenditure). Thanks to the work of some authors such as Townsend and Sen, the multidimensional character is highlighted, considering the difficulty of quantifying certain variables that translated the idea of lack. In addition, many empirical studies show that the rural sector remains the most affected by poverty.In the case of Côte d'Ivoire, poverty is also a rural phenomenon and most studies have focused on the monetary approach.This study addresses the analysis of poverty by focusing on rural farming and apprehends the phenomenon of poverty from three (03) approaches: (i) monetary; (ii) relative deprivation and (iii) wealth.The results show that poverty remains important in this sector with a high rate for the indicator of the relative deprivation. In addition, there is greater monetary inequality than other types of poverty whatever the year (2002 and 2008).The identification of the explanatory factors of the membership or not in the class of the poor shows that the variables related to the gender, to the type of religion and the age group are the most common in the various years and various approaches.Based on the obtained results , the following recommendations are formulated: (i) towards the Ivorian government, use monetary and non-monetary approaches in next analyses on poverty in Côte d’Ivoire; emphasize the construction of new infrastructures and the purchase of new equipment; improve communication about government actions; build the capacity of producers to use improved inputs and relevant tools; (ii) to agricultural producers, adopt agricultural technologies and techniques and quality inputs, accept to join cooperative enterprises; (iii) for cooperatives, it is necessary to look for outlets for its members, to negotiate better remunerations for agricultural productions, to transform farmers into real agricultural entrepreneurs.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:48:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cleuseni Hermelina de Carvalho.pdf: 1364887 bytes, checksum: 3b44bf46cef84a2cfa9ccc7046418cc7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-24 / The programs of conditional cash transfer are increasingly playing an important role in combating poverty in many countries of Latin America, especially in Brazil. The objective of this work is to analyze the contribution of Bolsa Família in household income inequality in Brazil between 2006 and 2011. To achieve the purpose, we analyze the relative participation of eight sources of income: labor, pensions, Bolsa Família (proxy variable), pensions, allowances, grants, rents and interest in the five geographical regions, North, Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, and South and metropolitan regions. That said, this study was organized in three chapters. The first chapter presents a reinterpretation of the causes of income inequality backed in Brazilian literature. The second analyzes the income transfer programs in four Latin American countries: Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Peru. The third presents a mathematical technique used to decompose the Gini, we analyze the empirical results for Brazil, macro-regions and metropolitan areas. Finally, it is concluded that, among the presented results, the importance of the Bolsa Família and especially labor income to reduce the degree of inequality / Os programas de transferência condicionada de renda vêm cada vez mais desempenhando um papel importante no combate à pobreza em vários países da América Latina, principalmente no Brasil. Assim, o objetivo desse trabalho é analisar a contribuição do Programa Bolsa Família na desigualdade da renda domiciliar per capita no Brasil, entre 2006 e 2011. Para atingir o propósito, analisa-se a participação relativa de oito fontes de renda: trabalho, aposentadorias, Programa Bolsa Família (variável proxy), pensões, abonos, doações, aluguéis e juros, nas cinco macrorregiões e regiões metropolitanas brasileiras. Posto isto, o presente estudo foi organizado em três capítulos. O primeiro capítulo apresenta uma releitura das causas da desigualdade de renda lastreada na literatura especializada brasileira. No segundo analisam-se os programas de transferência de renda em quatro países latino-americanos: México, Chile, Argentina e Peru. O terceiro apresenta a técnica matemática utilizada para decompor o Gini, analisam-se os resultados empíricos para Brasil, macrorregiões e regiões metropolitanas. Dentre os resultados, destacam-se a capacidade do programa Bolsa Família em contribuir para a queda da desigualdade da renda domiciliar nacional, indicando uma possível focalização em seu desenho como política

O dilema do prisioneiro (DP) é um dos principais jogos da teoria dos jogos. No dilema do prisioneiro discreto (DPD), dois prisioneiros têm as opções de cooperar ou desertar. Um jogador cooperador não delata seu comparsa, já um desertor delata. Se um cooperar e o outro desertar, o cooperador fica preso por cinco anos e o desertor fica livre. Se ambos cooperarem, ficam presos por um ano e, se ambos desertarem, ficam presos por três anos. Quando o DP é repetido, a cooperação pode emergir entre agentes egoístas. Realizamos um estudo analítico para o DPD, que produziu uma formulação da evolução do nível médio de cooperação e da tentação crítica (valor de tentação que causa mudança abrupta do nível de cooperação). No dilema do prisioneiro contínuo (DPC), cada jogador apresenta um nível de cooperação que define o grau de cooperação. Utilizamos o DPC para estudar o efeito da personalidade dos jogadores sobre a emergência da cooperação. Para isso, propusemos novas estratégias: uma baseada na personalidade dos jogadores e outras duas baseadas na comparação entre o ganho obtido e a aspiração do jogador. Todas as estratégias apresentavam algum mecanismo de cópia do estado do vizinho com maior ganho na vizinhança, mecanismo este, herdado da estratégia darwiniana. Os resultados mostraram que o DPC aumenta o nível médio de cooperação do sistema, quando comparado ao DPD. No entanto, as diferentes estratégias não aumentaram a cooperação comparado à cooperação obtida com a estratégia darwiniana. Então propusemos o uso do coeficiente de agrupamentos, coeficiente de Gini e entropias de Shannon, Tsallis e Kullback-Leibler para classificar os sistemas, em que os agentes jogam o DPD com a estratégia darwiniana, quanto ao nível de cooperação. Como analisamos valores de médias configuracionais, tais classificadores não foram eficientes ao classificar os sistemas. Isso é consequência da existência de distribuições de extremos nos resultados que compõem as médias. As distribuições de extremos suscitaram uma discussão acerca da definição do regime de cooperação no dilema do prisioneiro. Discutimos também as consequências de utilizar apenas valores médios nos resultados ignorando seus desvios e as distribuições. / Prisoner\'s dilemma (PD) is one of the main games of game theory. In discrete prisoner\'s dilemma (DPD), two prisoners have the options to cooperate or to defect. A cooperator player does not defect his accomplice, while a defector does. If one player cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator gets jailed for five years and the defector goes free. If both cooperate, they get jailed during one year and if both defect, they get jailed during three years. When this game is repeated, cooperation may emerge among selfish individuals. We perform an analytical study for the DPD, that produced a formulation for the evolution of the mean cooperation level and for the critical temptation values (temptation values that promote abrupt modifications in the cooperation level). In continuous prisoner\'s dilemma (CPD), each player has a level of cooperation that defines his/her degree of cooperation. We used the CPD to study the effect of the players\' personality on the emergence of cooperation. For this, we propose new strategies: one based on the players\' personality and two others based on the comparison between the player\'s obtained payoff and the desire one. All strategies present some mechanism that copies the state of the neighbor with the highest payoff in the neighborhood, mechanism inherited from the Darwinian strategy. The results showed that the CPD increases the average cooperation level of the system when compared to DPD. However, different strategies do not increased the cooperation compared to cooperation obtained with the Darwinian strategy. So, we propose the use of cluster coefficient, Gini coefficient and entropy of Shannon, Tsallis and Kullback-Leibler as classifiers to classify systems, in which the individuals play DPD with Darwinian strategy, by the cooperation level. As configurational averages were analyzed, such classifiers were not efficient in classifying the systems. This is due to the existence of distributions with extreme values of the results that compose the means. Distributions with extremes values emerged a discussion about the definition of the cooperation state in the prisoner\'s dilemma. We also discussed the consequences of using only average results in the analysis ignoring their deviations and distributions.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:00:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 intruducao, capitulos 1 e 2.pdf: 1527245 bytes, checksum: f0d04555bf4806de52e55f2062a6c064 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-05-08 / A inserção do estado do Espírito Santo no capitalismo, tanto a nível nacional como internacional, condicionou o cenário sócioeconômico da década de 90, no final do século XX. Nesse ambiente, destacam-se a concentração da atividade econômica e populacional em poucos municípios, especialmente nos da Região Metropolitana de Vitória. Contudo, eram nesses municípios que se concentravam também os problemas sociais. Numa análise geral, o IDHM-R melhorou significativamente entre os Censos de 1991 e 2000. No início da década 60 municípios estavam na categoria baixo-médio; em 2000, eram apenas três. Entretanto, 35 municípios, onde residiam mais de 73% da população, obtiveram aumento na concentração de renda. Pode-se afirmar que houve desenvolvimento econômico no estado nos anos 1990, pelo menos em grande parte dos municípios; contudo, verifica-se um efeito nocivo ao bem-estar social. Quanto ao IDHMA, grande parte dos municípios capixabas enquadrava-se na faixa de médio desenvolvimento humano, e nenhum se encontrava na categoria de alto desenvolvimento. A região Norte, acima do rio Doce, possuía os piores indicadores de desenvolvimento em razão das especificidades da história socioeconômica da região. A maioria dos municípios com melhores IDHMA estava próximo à Colatina, Cachoeiro do Itapemirim e numa faixa litorânea que partia de Aracruz até Piúma. / The involvement of the state of Espirito Santo in capitalism, as much at the national as well as the international level, determined the socioeconomic scene of the 1990s, at the end of 2oth century. In this environment, there was a clear concentration of economic and population activity in few cities councils, especially the ones within the Metropolitan Region of Vitoria. However, in these cities there was a corresponding concentration of social problems. In a general analysis, between the Censuses of 1991 and 2000 the IDHM-R improved significantly. At the beginning of the decade 60 cities councils were in the below average category; by 2000 there were only three. Nevertheless, 35 cities councils, where 73% of the population used to live, had gained an increase in income. It can be affirmed that there had been economic development in the state in the 1990s, at least to a large extent within the cities; however, a detrimental effect on social welfare is verified. As for the IDHMA, large part of Espirito Santo cities councils was fitted in the medium human development, and none in the category of high development. In the North region, above the Rio Doce, had the worse indicator of development in reason of particular socioeconomic history of the region. The majority of the cities with better IDHMA were next to the Colatina, Cachoeiro de Itapemirim and on the coast line from Aracruz until Piúma.

O objetivo primordial deste trabalho é analisar se a democracia é uma instituição política que produz resultados econômicos menos desiguais do que os regimes autoritários. A importância deste tema reside no fato que a própria promoção da democracia na agenda da política internacional tornou-se fundamental por inúmeras razões entre as quais sua suposta propensão em reduzir estas disparidades econômicas. Em primeiro lugar apresentamos no Capítulo 1 um balanço da discussão teórica e empírica a partir da qual constatamos que, a despeito do senso comum de que a democracia está relacionada a uma cidadania mais igualitária, os seus efeitos sobre a desigualdade ainda são discutíveis. Mesmo existindo um razoável consenso teórico de que os regimes democráticos devem, de alguma forma, produzir uma melhor distribuição de bens, os resultados empíricos são inconclusivos e contraditórios. Em seguida, diante de tal impasse empírico, propomos no Capítulo 2 uma reformulação da argumentação na qual entendemos que os efeitos da democracia sobre a desigualdade devem ser reinterpretados. A principal contribuição da tese reside na constatação, tanto teórica quanto empírica, de que estes efeitos são heterogêneos e interagem com o próprio nível de desigualdade, e, por conseguinte, é equivocado o suposto de que esses efeitos são homogêneos e independentes do contexto sócio-econômico da desigualdade. No Capítulo 3 apresentamos os dados e os conceitos de democracia e desigualdade. Assumimos que democracia se caracteriza como o regime político no qual os líderes competem entre si por meio de eleições e verificamos se os seus efeitos variam ao longo da própria distribuição de desigualdade econômica mensurada pelo coeficiente de GINI. Para tal análise, realizamos uma série de modelos de regressão quantílica, a metodologia adequada para avaliar o debate sobre a heterogeneidade versus homogeneidade dos efeitos. O argumento teórico, a partir do qual elabora-se a hipótese dos efeitos heterogêneos, refere-se à necessidade de uma convergência entre os interesses eleitorais dos partidos o lado da oferta e as clivagens sobre as quais uma potencial maioria dos eleitores tem interesse em ser atendido o lado da demanda por políticas públicas e plataformas. Isto posto, é 9 necessário discutir as condições que estimulam as lideranças políticas a utilizarem o problema da desigualdade econômica como argumento eleitoral e as condições nas quais surge uma demanda dos cidadãos por redistribuição via ação estatal. Somente nas sociedades mais desiguais tanto os partidos políticos têm interesse em ofertar políticas redistributivas, quanto tende a surgir no seio da cidadania uma demanda por redistribuição por parte de uma maioria de eleitores. No Capítulo 4 comprovamos empiricamente que os efeitos da competição democrática em sociedades mais desiguais são diferentes seus efeitos em sociedades mais iguais; e estes efeitos estão em direção à maior redução da desigualdade apenas nas sociedades mais desiguais. Os resultados são robustos às mais diferentes especificações dos modelos estatísticos, dados e formas de mensuração, tanto de democracia quanto de desigualdade, em diferentes cortes temporais e horizontes históricos de análise. Inclusive quando estendemos o recorte temporal para antes do pós-2ª Guerra Mundial utilizando dados que abrangem o período de surgimento dos primeiros regimes representativos democráticos no século XIX, a veracidade das hipóteses dos efeitos heterogêneos e de que há maior contundência da democracia em direção à redução da desigualdade nas sociedades mais desiguais permanece. Por fim, além deste problema teórico e empírico de crucial importância, também controlamos a análise para a potencial relação recíproca entre democracia e desigualdade. Enquanto parte da literatura discute os potenciais efeitos igualitários da democracia, outra importante literatura debate se o aumento da desigualdade aumenta ou reduz a probabilidade de um país tornar-se ou manter-se democrático. Posto isto, apresentamos uma lista de variáveis instrumentais para estimar validamente os efeitos da democracia sobre a desigualdade independente da relação entre desigualdade e democracia / The primary aim of this study is to analyze whether democracy is a political institution that produces less unequal economic outcomes than authoritarian regimes. The importance of this issue lies in the fact that the very promotion of democracy in the international political agenda has become essential for many reasons, including its supposed propensity to reduce economic disparities. First, at Chapter 1 we overview the theoretical and empirical discussion from which we find that despite the common sense that democracy must be related to a more egalitarian citizenship, its effects on inequality is still debatable. Even with a reasonable theoretical consensus that democracies must somehow produce a better distribution of goods; the empirical results are inconclusive and contradictory. After that, facing such empirical impasse, we propose at Chapter 2 a reformulation about the rationale to explain and analyze the effects of democracy on inequality. The main contribution of this thesis lies in both the theoretical and the empirical claim that these effects are heterogeneous and should interact with the level of inequality and, therefore, the assumption that these effects are homogeneous and independent of the socio-economic context of inequality is wrong. In Chapter 3, we present the data and concepts of democracy and inequality. We assume that democracy is characterized as a political regime in which leaders compete through elections and we test whether the effects vary along the distribution of economic inequality measured by the Gini coefficient. To do that, we conducted a series of quantile regression models, appropriate to evaluate the alternative hypothesis whether the effects are heterogeneous or homogenous. The theoretical argument, from which we elaborate the hypothesis of heterogeneous effects, refers to the need for a convergence between the electoral interests of the parties - the supply side - and the political cleavages on which a majority of voters have potential interest being played - the demand side for other public policies and platforms. Hence, it is necessary to discuss the conditions that lead the political leadership to use the problem of economic 11 inequality as an electoral argument and the conditions under which a demand by citizens for redistribution via state action rises. Only at the most unequal societies the political parties have an interest in offering redistributive policies, as well as there is a higher propensity for a redistribution demand by a majority of voters. In Chapter 4, we proved empirically that the effects of democratic competition at more unequal societies are different from the effects of democracy in more equal societies; and these effects tend to be greater toward inequality reduction only at more unequal societies. These results are robust to different statistical model specifications, data and measurement methods, about both democracy and inequality, and to the use of different time horizons. Even when we extend the time frame of the analysis to the period before World War II - using new data that covers XIX century, the veracity of the hypotheses about the heterogeneous effects and that these effects of democracy toward the reduction of inequality are larger at the most unequal societies remains intact. Finally, beyond this theoretical and empirical issue of crucial importance, we also control the analysis for potential reciprocal relationship between democracy and inequality. This is because while much of the literature discusses the potential effects of egalitarian democracy, another important literature debate discusses whether greater inequality increases or reduces the probability of a country become or remain democratic. Hence, we present a list of valid instrumental variables to estimate the effects of democracy on inequality independent of the relationship between inequality and democracy