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Author: Nancy Birdsall
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 1990
Total Pages: 43
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn most countries it is easy to identify reallocations of public spending for social programs that would improve efficiency and simultaneously improve the distribution of income and better serve the poor. The authors suggest why these reallocations are difficult but not impossible to bring about.
Author: Alejandro Izquierdo
Publisher:
Published: 2018-08-31
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9781597823302
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Svetlana Vtyurina
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Published: 2020-01-30
Total Pages: 27
ISBN-13: 1513526006
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSpain is experiencing sustained economic and social disparities in several areas. Social spending policies have a heightened responsibility to respond but are challenged by high public debt and pressures from an aging society. This study takes stock of the level and effectiveness of public social expenditure from a cross-country and macroeconomic view, complementing recent targeted spending reviews. The results suggest that social protection spending should aim to improve redistribution through better targeting the most vulnerable while more effective education and active labor market policies should aim to create more equal opportunities and income prospects. In some areas more fiscal resources are needed. But social spending alone cannot reduce inequality, and efforts also should be directed toward making the labor market more inclusive.
Author: Arthur M. Okun
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2015-04-30
Total Pages: 171
ISBN-13: 0815726546
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOriginally published in 1975, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff is a very personal work from one of the most important macroeconomists of the last hundred years. And this new edition includes "Further Thoughts on Equality and Efficiency," a paper published by the author two years later. In classrooms Arthur M. Okun may be best remembered for Okun's Law, but his lasting legacy is the respect and admiration he earned from economists, practitioners, and policymakers. Equality and Efficiency is the perfect embodiment of that legacy, valued both by professional economists and those readers with a keen interest in social policy. To his fellow economists, Okun presents messages, in the form of additional comments and select citations, in his footnotes. To all readers, Okun presents an engaging dual theme: the market needs a place, and the market needs to be kept in its place. As Okun puts it: Institutions in a capitalist democracy prod us to get ahead of our neighbors economically after telling us to stay in line socially. This double standard professes and pursues an egalitarian political and social system while simultaneously generating gaping disparities in economic well-being. Today, Okun's dual theme feels incredibly prescient as we grapple with the hot-button topic of income inequality. In his foreword, Lawrence H. Summers declares: On what one might think of as questions of "economic philosophy," I doubt that Okun has been improved on in the subsequent interval. His discussion of how societies rely on rights as well as markets should be required reading for all young economists who are enamored with market solutions to all problems. With a new foreword by Lawrence H. Summers
Author: Mr. Andrew Berg
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Published: 2021-07-16
Total Pages: 44
ISBN-13: 1513592963
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMany studies predict massive job losses and real wage decline as a result of the ongoing widespread automation of production, a trend that may be further aggravated by the COVID-19 crisis. Yet automation is also expected to raise productivity and output. How can we share the gains from automation more widely, for the benefit of all? And what are the attendant equity-efficiency trade-offs? We analyze this issue by considering the effects of fiscal policies that seek to redistribute the gains from automation and address income inequality. We use a dynamic general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition, including a novel specification linking corporate power to automation. While fiscal policy cannot eliminate the classic equity-efficiency trade-offs, it can help improve them, reducing inequality at small or no loss of output. This is particularly so when policy takes advantage of novel, less distortive transmission channels of fiscal policy created by the empirically observed link between corporate market power and automation.
Author: Hyun Hwa Son
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-03
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 113657932X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEquity is an abstract concept covering philosophical issues such as fairness and social justice, making its definition and measurement complex. This volume tackles these complexities head-on. The book is enriched with many empirical analyses and provides a comprehensive analysis of equity ranging from concepts and measurements to empirical illustrations and policy implications. After an extensive discussion on equity in the introduction, this volume begins with a chapter on well-being where the concepts of functioning and capability are discussed. This is followed by a few chapters on what an equitable distribution is and how equity can be measured. The volume then provides a definition and a methodology to measure equitable growth, examining the relationship between growth, inequality, and poverty. It also presents various empirical illustrations and country-specific experiences with three country case studies which assess whether publicly provided health and education services are equitable in developing Asia, examining the extent to which these social services favor the poor as well as the policy challenges to a more equitable delivery of these services. Finally, these country studies provide evidence–based policy recommendations to improve equity in social service delivery in developing countries. Achieving social equity has long been an important policy goal. There are relatively few studies on equity. This book aims to help fill this gap with an in-depth analysis of the issues associated with equity, covering its concept, measurement, and policy practices and implications.
Author: Mr.Jonathan David Ostry
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Published: 2014-02-17
Total Pages: 30
ISBN-13: 1484397657
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Fund has recognized in recent years that one cannot separate issues of economic growth and stability on one hand and equality on the other. Indeed, there is a strong case for considering inequality and an inability to sustain economic growth as two sides of the same coin. Central to the Fund’s mandate is providing advice that will enable members’ economies to grow on a sustained basis. But the Fund has rightly been cautious about recommending the use of redistributive policies given that such policies may themselves undercut economic efficiency and the prospects for sustained growth (the so-called “leaky bucket” hypothesis written about by the famous Yale economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s). This SDN follows up the previous SDN on inequality and growth by focusing on the role of redistribution. It finds that, from the perspective of the best available macroeconomic data, there is not a lot of evidence that redistribution has in fact undercut economic growth (except in extreme cases). One should be careful not to assume therefore—as Okun and others have—that there is a big tradeoff between redistribution and growth. The best available macroeconomic data do not support such a conclusion.
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2017-04-27
Total Pages: 583
ISBN-13: 0309452961
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Published: 2005-04-04
Total Pages: 56
ISBN-13: 1557755418
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPublic expenditure policy, together with efforts to raise revenue,is at the core of efficient and equitable adjustment. Public expenditureproductivity has critical implications for fiscal adjustment, particularly as the competition for limited public resources intensifies.By providing a framework for defining and analyzing public expenditureproductivity and unproductive expenditures, this pamphlet discusseshow economic policymakers may approach these issues.
Author: Carlos Gradín
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 373
ISBN-13: 0198863969
DOWNLOAD EBOOKInequality has emerged as a key development challenge. It holds implications for economic growth and redistribution and translates into power asymmetries that can endanger human rights, create conflict, and embed social exclusion and chronic poverty. For these reasons, it underpins intense public and academic debates and has become a dominant policy concern within many countries and in all multilateral agencies. It is at the core of the 17 goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This book contributes to this important discussion by presenting assessments of the measurement and analysis of global inequality by leading inequality scholars, aligning these to comprehensive reviews of inequality trends in five of the world's largest developing countries - Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa.
