The economic development and industrialization that has taken place in many parts of the world during the past century has brought about a huge increase in economic welfare. During this process, it has repeatedly been debated whether the gains from economic development are shared by everyone or just a few. In the field of economics, vast research has been conducted on this particular subject ever since the 1950’s. The most famous contribution might be said to be Simon Kuznets article, Growth and Income Inequality from 1955 and the ”inverted U”-hypothesis that was formulated on the basis of that article. The essence of the hypothesis is that a country, during its development, moves from agricultural to industrial production. At first, income inequality increases and then, at the end of the process, decreases. The aim of this paper has been to investigate the relationship between income distribution and economic development in a particular region, namely the countries of the former Soviet Union, during 1992-2003. Also, we have tested whether Kuznets theory and the “inverted U”-hypothesis hold true for our sample. The investigations method is a survey, which uses secondary data collected from the World Bank’s database of World Development Indicators. Regression-analysis has been employed to conduct cross-sections between 20 countries over 4 periods in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The number of observations equals to 62. The variables that we use are: the Gini index, GDP per capita and the agricultural sector’s share of GDP. The results of the regression do not indicate any resemblance to the pattern of the “inverted U”-hypothesis. The curve we get is that of a “positive U”. Countries with high GDP per capita as well as countries with low GDP per capita have high income inequality. Countries with mediate GDP per capita levels have low income inequality. Our analysis concludes that the countries in our sample might have had a very unique economic development following the fall of the Soviet Union. Only 7 countries partly follow the Kuznets theory if tested individually. Since these seven countries seem to have a reversed development with increasing agricultural sector and the remainder of the countries show increasing income inequality, we reject the “inverted U”-hypothesis and question the ability of Kuznets’ theory to explain income distribution for our sample.

L'entorn econòmic de l'Índia ha canviat significativament a partir de la seva independència de Gran Bretanya l'any 1947. Després de més de tres dècades de creixement econòmic mediocre, els 80 va marcar el començament d'una nova etapa d'altes taxes de creixement econòmic a partir de noves polítiques econòmiques més orientades a una més competitiva economia de mercat. Tot i la millora en taxes de creixement, aquest model de creixement es basava en gran mesura en un gran protagonisme per part de la despesa pública, el que va precipitar la crisi financera de 1991. Com a resultat d'aquesta crisi i l'assistència proporcionada pel FMI, es van introduir reformes desreguladores i liberalitzadores. La dècada dels 90 va ser acompanyada de taxes de creixement encara més altes que la dècada anterior. En la dècada més recent, els 2000, l'obertura estable de l'economia Índia ha permès taxes de creixement més altes que en les dècades anteriors. Desafortunadament, aquest gran creixement econòmic ha anat acompanyat amb un augment important dels nivells de desigualtat d'ingrés durant aquest mateix període, tant a nivell nacional com entre els estats que formen part de l'Índia. Aquesta tesi es concentra en l'estudi de la relació entre creixement econòmic i desigualtat de l'ingrés, tant a nivell nacional com entre els estats. Aquest projecte de recerca també inclou cobertura exhaustiva respecte a l'evolució d'altres variables macroeconòmiques als dos nivells: nacional i inter-estatal. / El entorno económico de la India ha cambiado significativamente a partir de su independencia de Gran Bretaña en el año 1947. Después de más de tres décadas de crecimiento económico mediocre, los 80 marcó el comienzo de una nueva etapa de altas tasas de crecimiento económico a partir de nuevas políticas económicas más orientadas a una más competitiva economía de mercado. A pesar de la mejora en tasas de crecimiento, dicho modelo de crecimiento se basaba en gran medida en un gran protagonismo por parte del gasto público, lo que precipitó la crisis financiera de 1991. Como resultado de dicha crisis, y la asistencia proporcionada por el FMI se introdujeron reformas desreguladoras y liberalizadoras. La década de los 90 fue acompañada de tasas de crecimiento aún más altas que la década anterior. En la década más reciente, los 2000, la apertura estable de la economía India ha permitido tasas de crecimiento más altas que en las décadas anteriores. Desafortunadamente, este gran crecimiento económico ha ido acompañado con un aumento importante de los niveles de desigualdad de ingreso durante este mismo periodo, tanto a nivel nacional como entre los estados que forman parte de la India. Esta tesis se concentra en el estudio de la relación entre crecimiento económico y desigualdad del ingreso, tanto a nivel nacional como entre los estados. Dicho proyecto de investigación también incluye cobertura exhaustiva con respecto a la evolución de otras variables macroeconómicas a los dos niveles: nacional e inter-estatal. / India’s economic climate has experienced significant change since its independence from Great Britain in 1947. After more than three decades of mediocre economic growth, the 1980s ushered in a new era of accelerated growth rates by way of promoting a more efficient pro-business model. Despite the improvement in growth rates, the 1980s were fueled by over zealous public spending, precipitating the well-known financial crisis in 1991. As a result of the crisis, and the IMF supplied aid contingent on the introduction of gradual deregulatory reforms of the Indian economy, the 1990s brought about even greater economic growth rates than the previous decade. Into the 2000s, India’s continued and steady opening has afforded even further acceleration in growth rates. Despite these positive developments in the Indian economy, the unfortunate truth is that income inequality has likewise been increasing over this same period, most notably across the states. This dissertation endeavors to apply the established macroeconomic field dedicated to the study of income inequality’s effect on economic growth to the case of India, both at the national level and even more critically at the state level. Our research also includes exhaustive coverage regarding the evolution of other relevant macroeconomic variables across states, as well as nationally.

The paper discusses the interactions of changes in income distribution and the accumulation dynamics in the post-Fordist accumulation regime in OECD countries, which is characterized by deregulated financial markets. The neoliberal mode of regulation came with a decisive shift in power relations at the expense of labor, which is clearly reflected in the fall of wage shares across OECD economies. The notion of a "finance-dominated" accumulation regime is proposed to highlight that financial developments crucially shape the pattern and the pace of accumulation. Financial globalization has relaxed balance of payment constraints and thereby allowed the build up of big international imbalances. The combination of real wage moderation and financial liberalization has led to different strategies (or at least outcomes) in different countries. While some countries (like the USA) exhibit a credit-fuelled consumption-driven growth model that comes with large current account deficits, others (like Germany and Japan) show an export-driven growth model with modest consumption growth and large current account surpluses. Overall the finance-dominated accumulation regime is characterized by a mediocre growth performance and by a high degree of fragility. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Thesis (M.A.)--University of New Brunswick, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references.

Since the end of World War II, and especially over the past three decades, there has been a dramatic increase of interactions between international financial institutions (IFIs) and states. This paper will explore these interactions by examining the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This paper rests on the assumption that the complex implications of these interactions are not yet comprehensively understood and will move towards that goal by setting forth a collection of new approaches to further understand IFI-state interaction. It will discuss Jordan’s economic and political history, structural adjustment policies implemented by the IMF, and responses and consequences of such policy on economic, cultural, and political dimensions. Then, theories on sovereignty, identity, nationalism and colonialism will be applied to Jordan-IMF interaction in order to suggest new ways of understanding the implications of IFI-state interaction.

To respond to the high imported food prices in their domestic markets, net food importing countries in the Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) zone[1] are adjusting their import tariffs and homologate domestic prices of imported commodities such as rice, wheat, maize, and sugar. This research uses a multivariate specification of error correction model (VECM) of estimation to investigate the link between food imports, world price index of rice, wheat, maize and sugar, real effective exchange rates, domestic food production, GDP, and trade openness in the short and long run. The data are on each homogenous commodity from 1969 to 2012. This research finds a long-run relationship between world price index, domestic production, GDP, real effective exchange rates and trade openness. Under fixed exchange rates regime, GDP, domestic food production, world price index of food, and trade openness are the determinants of food imported in the CFA zones. Policy options focusing on long-term investment in domestic food production of rice, wheat, maize and sugar, and trade openness are the fundamental factors to curtail the increasing food import volume/bill under fixed exchange rate regime in the CFA zones. [1] The CFA zone in Sub-Saharan Africa is the WAEMU and CEMAC Countries, which are listed and represented in figure 1.

Investigating how lending programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) affect poverty and inequality, we explicitly address model uncertainty. We control for endogenous selection into IMF programs using data on 86 low- and middle income countries for the 1982-2009 period and analyze program effects on various poverty and inequality measures. The results rely on averaging over 90 specifications of treatment effect models and indicate adverse short-run effects of IMF agreements on poverty and inequality for the whole sample, while for a 2000-2009 subsample the results are reversed. There is evidence that significant short-run effects might disappear in the long-run. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

David Rusk claims in Cities Without Suburbs that elastic American cities are less segregated than other American cities. I demonstrate through statistical analyses that there is a strong correlation between Rusk's elasticity (an index comprised of a central city's annexation history since 1950 and its population density) and his income segregation index. The statistical correlation between these two variables is stronger than between Rusk's segregation index and any other variable I test, including city age, size, regional location, and black population percentage. I then consider several hypotheses that may explain these correlations and propose that the continuous annexation of peripheral, developing land by a central city prevents the incorporation of affluent suburbs. Suburban boundaries, especially those of affluent suburbs, function as population sorting mechanisms, which segregate migrant households by socioeconomic status and life-style. I ascertain that only rapidly growing, unbounded central cities prevent or ameliorate segregation by being elastic. / Department of Urban Planning

This thesis addresses the issue of weighted cost-benefit analysis (WCBA). WCBA is a welfare evaluation model where income distribution effects are valued by distributional weighting. The method was developed already in the 1970s. The interest in and applications of this method have increased in the past decade, e.g. when evaluating of global environmental problems. There are, however, still unsolved problems regarding the application of this method. One such issue is the choice of the approach to the means of estimating of the distributional weights. The literature on WCBA suggests a couple of approaches, but gives no clues as to which one is the most appropriate one to use, either from a theoretical or from an empirical point of view. Accordingly, the choice of distributional weights may be an arbitrary one. In the first paper in this thesis, the consequences of the choice of distributional weights on project decisions have been studied. Different sets of distributional weights have been compared across a variety of strategically chosen income distribution effects. The distributional weights examined are those that correspond to the WCBA approaches commonly suggested in literature on the topic. The results indicate that the choice of distributional weights is of importance for the rank of projects only when the income distribution effects concern target populations with low incomes. The results also show that not only the mean income but also the span of incomes, of the target population of the income distribution effect, affects the result of the distributional weighting when applying very progressive non-linear distributional weights. This may cause the distributional weighting to indicate an income distribution effect even though the project effect is evenly distributed across the population. One rational for distributional weighting, commonly referred to when applying WCBA, is that marginal utility of income is decreasing with income. In the second paper, this hypothesis is tested. My study contributes to this literature by employing stated preference data on compensated variation (CV) in a model flexible as to the functional form of the marginal utility. The results indicate that the marginal utility of income decreases linearly with income. Under certain conditions, a decreasing marginal utility of income corresponds to risk aversion. Thus the hypothesis that marginal utility of income is decreasing with income can be tested by analyses of individuals’ behaviour in gambling situations. The third paper examines of the role of risk aversion, defined by the von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility function, for people’s concern about the problem of ‘sick’ buildings. The analysis is based on data on the willingness to pay (WTP) for having the indoor air quality (IAQ) at home examined and diagnosed by experts and the WTP for acquiring an IAQ at home that is guaranteed to be good. The results indicate that some of the households are willing to pay for an elimination of the uncertainty of the IAQ at home, even though they are not willing to pay for an elimination of the risks for building related ill health. The probability to pay, for an elimination of the uncertainty of the indoor air quality at home, only because of risk aversion is estimated to 0.3-0.4. Risk aversion seems to be a more common motive, for the decision to pay for a diagnosis of the IAQ at home, among young people. Another rationale for distributional weighting, commonly referred to, is the existence of unselfish motives for economic behaviour, such as social inequality aversion or altruism. In the fourth paper the hypothesis that people have altruistic preferences, i.e. that they care about other people’s well being, is tested. The WTP for a public project, that ensures good indoor air quality in all buildings, have been measured in three different ways for three randomly drawn sub-samples, capturing different motives for economic behaviour (pure altruism, paternalism and selfishness). The significance of different questions, and different motives, is analysed using an independent samples test of the mean WTPs of the sub-samples, a chi-square test of the association between the WTP and the sample group membership and an econometric analysis of the decision to pay to the public project. No evidence for altruism, either pure altruism or paternalism, is found in this study.

A partir da década de 90 um novo modelo de concepção do papel do Estado e de suas funções na economia dominou o Estado brasileiro. Esse novo paradigma, conhecido como neoliberalismo, prometia dar fim a crise pela qual o país passava, ou melhor, o fim do processo de inflacionário, o retorno a estabilidade econômica e a retomada do crescimento. O receituário dessa política foi adotado pelo governo brasileiro, entretanto, mais de uma década se passou e além de não ter gerado o resultado prometido, transformou o orçamento público num mecanismo de transferência de renda das classes de renda mais baixas para as mais altas. Nesse sentido que este trabalho analisa a política orçamentária no Brasil no período de 1995-2005. O ponto central está em seu efeito distributivo a partir da análise quantitativa e qualitativa da elevação da carga tributária nacional e do gasto público. Essa leitura é feita a partir da análise do papel do Estado na economia, e a importância das mudanças desse paradigma e seu reflexo na acumulação do capital nos últimos 30 anos. / Since the nineties, a new model of the conception and of the economic functions of the state dominates Brazil’s State. This new paradigm, known as neoliberalism, promised to put an end to the crisis that the country suffered, or better, to put an end to the inflation process, to return to economic stability and to regenerate growth. The recipe of that policy was adopted by the Brazilian government, nevertheless, over a decade has passed and not only the promised outcomes have not been obtained, but they turned the fiscal budget into income transfer mechanism form the lower to the higher income classes. In that sense this dissertation analyzes the budget policy in Brazil during 1995-2005. The main point is the distributive effect following the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the raise in the country’s tax burden and in public expenses. This is done beginning from the analysis of the state’s role in the economy, the importance of the changes of that paradigm and its reflex on capital accumulation in the last thirty years.