Thesis (MComm)—Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In recent decades, economists and sociologists have taken an increasing interest in the study of income attainment and income inequality. Many of these studies have used census data, but social surveys have also increasingly been utilised as sources for these analyses. In these surveys, respondents’ incomes are most often not measured in true amounts, but in categories of which the last category is open-ended. The reason is that income is seen as sensitive data and/or is sometimes difficult to reveal. Continuous data divided into categories is often more difficult to work with than ungrouped data. In this study, we compare different methods to convert grouped data to data where each observation has a specific value or point. For some methods, all the observations in an interval receive the same value; an example is the midpoint method, where all the observations in an interval are assigned the midpoint. Other methods include random methods, where each observation receives a random point between the lower and upper bound of the interval. For some methods, random and non-random, a distribution is fitted to the data and a value is calculated according to the distribution. The non-random methods that we use are the midpoint-, Pareto means- and lognormal means methods; the random methods are the random midpoint-, random Pareto- and random lognormal methods. Since our focus falls on income data, which usually follows a heavy-tailed distribution, we use the Pareto and lognormal distributions in our methods. The above-mentioned methods are applied to simulated and real datasets. The raw values of these datasets are known, and are categorised into intervals. These methods are then applied to the interval data to reconvert the interval data to point data. To test the effectiveness of these methods, we calculate some measures of inequality. The measures considered are the Gini coefficient, quintile share ratio (QSR), the Theil measure and the Atkinson measure. The estimated measures of inequality, calculated from each dataset obtained through these methods, are then compared to the true measures of inequality. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Oor die afgelope dekades het ekonome en sosioloë ʼn toenemende belangstelling getoon in studies aangaande inkomsteverkryging en inkomste-ongelykheid. Baie van die studies maak gebruik van sensus data, maar die gebruik van sosiale opnames as bronne vir die ontledings het ook merkbaar toegeneem. In die opnames word die inkomste van ʼn persoon meestal in kategorieë aangedui waar die laaste interval oop is, in plaas van numeriese waardes. Die rede vir die kategorieë is dat inkomste data as sensitief beskou word en soms is dit ook moeilik om aan te dui. Kontinue data wat in kategorieë opgedeel is, is meeste van die tyd moeiliker om mee te werk as ongegroepeerde data. In dié studie word verskeie metodes vergelyk om gegroepeerde data om te skakel na data waar elke waarneming ʼn numeriese waarde het. Vir van die metodes word dieselfde waarde aan al die waarnemings in ʼn interval gegee, byvoorbeeld die ‘midpoint’ metode waar elke waarde die middelpunt van die interval verkry. Ander metodes is ewekansige metodes waar elke waarneming ʼn ewekansige waarde kry tussen die onder- en bogrens van die interval. Vir sommige van die metodes, ewekansig en nie-ewekansig, word ʼn verdeling oor die data gepas en ʼn waarde bereken volgens die verdeling. Die nie-ewekansige metodes wat gebruik word, is die ‘midpoint’, ‘Pareto means’ en ‘Lognormal means’ en die ewekansige metodes is die ‘random midpoint’, ‘random Pareto’ en ‘random lognormal’. Ons fokus is op inkomste data, wat gewoonlik ʼn swaar stertverdeling volg, en om hierdie rede maak ons gebruik van die Pareto en lognormaal verdelings in ons metodes. Al die metodes word toegepas op gesimuleerde en werklike datastelle. Die rou waardes van die datastelle is bekend en word in intervalle gekategoriseer. Die metodes word dan op die interval data toegepas om dit terug te skakel na data waar elke waarneming ʼn numeriese waardes het. Om die doeltreffendheid van die metodes te toets word ʼn paar maatstawwe van ongelykheid bereken. Die maatstawwe sluit in die Gini koeffisiënt, ‘quintile share ratio’ (QSR), die Theil en Atkinson maatstawwe. Die beraamde maatstawwe van ongelykheid, wat bereken is vanaf die datastelle verkry deur die metodes, word dan vergelyk met die ware maatstawwe van ongelykheid.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 1989. / Some digitised pages may appear illegible due to the condition of the original hard copy. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: see fulltext for abstract / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: sien volteks vir opsomming

published_or_final_version / abstract / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

In the United States, nobody can survive without depending on the income of oneself or of those that support them. Thus, economic opportunity and its skewed availability is pertinent to everyone. With income inequality in the United States measured in the early 2010s reaching some of the highest estimates among nations around the globe, people seek to investigate the forces behind this phenomenon and reverse it. This paper focuses on some of the many cycles and structures that exist to reinforce the challenges of achieving economic equality. Specifically, I extrapolate data to measure the correlations between the Great Recession and measures of income disparity. I then measure the effects across suburban, urban, and rural areas to highlight their differences. The paper further explains the relationship among the three, their relevance to the economy, and general directions in which organizations can circumvent the negative trends observed from the data.

Chi Him Roger Yip. / Thesis submitted in 1997. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-137). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Acknowledgment --- p.1 / Abstract --- p.2 / CONTENTS --- p.3 / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction and Overview --- p.5 / Chapter I. --- Age-earnings profiles --- p.6 / Chapter II. --- An overview of the thesis --- p.24 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.25 / Chapter I. --- Human capital as a determinant of earnings --- p.25 / Chapter A. --- The early roots: Adam Smith --- p.25 / Chapter B. --- Rapid development in human capital theory in the late 20th century --- p.27 / Chapter II. --- Empirical labour economics: Mincer's statistical earnings function --- p.29 / Chapter A. --- Development of the statistical earnings function --- p.29 / Chapter B. --- The problem of ability bias --- p.32 / Chapter III. --- Empirical Evidence --- p.34 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- The Data Sets and the Variables Available --- p.37 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Earnings Variations among Working Men --- p.40 / Chapter I. --- Summary statistics --- p.40 / Chapter II. --- "Earnings Function, and Estimation Results" --- p.42 / Chapter III. --- Summing-up --- p.52 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- The Contribution of Educational Fields to Earnings --- p.53 / Chapter I. --- Summary statistics --- p.53 / Chapter II. --- Earnings functions with educational fields as dummy variables --- p.63 / Chapter III. --- Summing-up --- p.76 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Earnings Variations by Industries --- p.78 / Chapter I. --- Summary statistics --- p.78 / Chapter II. --- Earnings functions with industries as dummy variables --- p.83 / Chapter III. --- Contribution of educational fields to earnings --- p.90 / Chapter IV. --- Summing-up --- p.106 / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Earnings Variations by Occupations --- p.107 / Chapter I. --- Summary statistics --- p.107 / Chapter II. --- Earnings functions with occupations as dummy variables --- p.112 / Chapter III. --- Contribution of educational fields to earnings --- p.118 / Chapter IV. --- Summing-up --- p.131 / Chapter Chapter 8 --- Conclusion --- p.132 / Bibliography --- p.134

Thesis. 1979. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 228-242. / by Rafael Corrada Guerrero. / Ph.D.

How important are the distributional effects of international trade? This has been one of the most central questions pursued by international economists, particularly because much of the public opposition towards increased openness is due to the belief that welfare changes are unevenly distributed. In this dissertation, I rely on counterfactual analysis and natural experiments to study topics of international trade, welfare and inequality in the context of both developing and developed economies. In particular, I combine theoretical modeling and empirical analysis to examine the effects of international trade on (1) real wages of individuals within and across countries; (2) within-sector wage dispersion caused by heterogeneous responses of firms with different productivity levels to cheaper imported inputs. In each of the three chapters, I contribute to the existing literature by relaxing simplifying assumptions that have proved to be inconsistent with data and exploring new mechanisms that link international trade to inequality. Chapter 1, “Trade and Real Wages with Demand and Productivity Heterogeneity,” presents a general equilibrium model that incorporates the effects of trade liberalization on both an individual’s nominal wage and consumer price index. A vast majority of the literature focuses on the income channel, which is its effect on the distribution of nominal wages across workers. A small number of studies consider the expenditure channel, which is its differential impact on consumer price indices. It is well known that the consumption baskets of high-income and low-income consumers look very different. To our knowledge, there are only three case studies that have looked at these two channels jointly for individual countries, Argentina, Mexico and India. We provide a unified framework incorporating both channels by allowing for non-homothetic preferences and worker heterogeneity across jobs. In spite of its many dimensions of heterogeneity at the individual level, the model remains tractable enough that allows us to estimate its key parameters and perform counterfactuals. Chapter 2, “Trade and Real Wage Inequality: Cross-Country Evidence,” addresses the following question: what is the impact of trade liberalization on the distribution of real wages in a large cross-section of countries? Trade liberalization affects real-wage inequality through two channels: the distribution of nominal wages across workers and, if the rich and the poor consume different bundles of goods, the distribution of price indices across consumers. Prior work has focused mostly on one or the other of these channels, but no paper has studied both jointly for a large set of countries. Based on the theoretical framework in Chapter 1, I measure the distributional effects of trade liberalization incorporating both channels for a sample of 40 countries. More specifically, I parametrize the model using sector-level trade and production data. Because skill-intensive goods are also high-income elastic in the data, I find an intuitive, previously unexplored, and strong interaction between the two channels. According to my counterfactual analysis, trade cost reductions generate dramatically different results for both nominal wage inequality and price index inequality than what previous research has obtained by focusing on either channel alone. I find that trade cost reductions decrease the relative nominal wage of the poor and the relative price index for the poor in all countries. On net, real-wage inequality falls everywhere. Chapter 3, “Imported Inputs and Within-Sector Wage Dispersion,” proposes a new mechanism through which trade liberalization affects income inequality within a country: the use of imported inputs. Intuitively, a firm with higher initial productivity is better at using higher quality foreign inputs. This justifies paying the fixed costs for a larger set of imported inputs when input tariff liberalization decreases their relative price. The firm becomes more import intensive, which enhances its productivity advantage. As a result, the firm hires higher quality workers, produces higher quality products and pays higher wages to its workers, increasing within-sector wage dispersion. We find that both the mean and the dispersion of the distribution of firm productivity, markup and size went up during a period when China reduced its tariffs on imported inputs. More importantly, these results still hold when we consider the subset of firms that survived throughout the sample period, from 1998 to 2007. In addition, we develop a partial-equilibrium, heterogeneous-firm model with endogenous imported inputs and labor quality choice that is consistent with these observations. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that supports the model’s prediction that the differential change in the import intensity of firms with different productivity levels explains these patterns.

This dissertation comprises three essays that explore determinants of inequality and social cohesion. The first essay explores the role of inheritance customs in spurring social equality. Using historical data on inheritance customs in Germany, I document that municipalities that historically fairly shared wealth among siblings see higher levels of social equality today. I point to two mechanisms that help explain the correlation: increased wealth equality and stronger pro-egalitarian preferences. Interestingly, I also find that equitably inheriting communities are associated with higher incomes and greater income inequality. I interpret this finding to mean that equitable inheritance levels the playing field by rewarding talent not hereditary status. The second essay analyzes how Protestant missions affect community cohesion. Exploiting variation in missionary activity in southeastern Peru, I document that villages exposed to missions have lower levels of community cohesion compared to non-exposed villages. I adjudicate between two mechanisms that may explain this finding - social networks and pro-social preferences - and find the latter to be more plausible. The third essay expands on this finding by implementing a field experiment with a missionary group in South Sudan in order to parse out the causal effect of Protestant evangelism on social capital. Using attitudinal and behavioral measures, I document that missionaries lower group-level social capital while increasing individual-level pro-social behavior. Taken together, my dissertation adds theoretical considerations and empirical evidence to a broad debate in the social sciences that tries to make sense of variation in social equality and cohesion.

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