For the Benefit of All: Fiscal Policies and Equity-Efficiency Trade-offs in the Age of Automation

For the Benefit of All: Fiscal Policies and Equity-Efficiency Trade-offs in the Age of Automation

Author: Mr. Andrew Berg

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2021-07-16

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13: 1513592963

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Many 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.


Increasing Returns and Economic Efficiency

Increasing Returns and Economic Efficiency

Author: Y. Ng

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-04-30

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 0230236812

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Recognizing increasing returns disrupts much of the established wisdom in economic analysis, making money non-neutral, equity conflict with freedom, and encouraging goods with increasing returns efficient. This book discusses these problems and ways they can be handled, helping to explain phenomena in the real world.


Equality and Efficiency REV

Equality and Efficiency REV

Author: Arthur M. Okun

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2015-04-30

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 0815726546

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Originally 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


Population Health Science

Population Health Science

Author: Katherine M. Keyes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-07-07

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0190459395

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POPULATION HEALTH SCIENCE formalizes an emerging discipline at the crossroads of social and medical sciences, demography, and economics--an emerging approach to population studies that represents a seismic shift in how traditional health sciences measure and observe health events. Bringing together theories and methods from diverse fields, this text provides grounding in the factors that shape population health. The overall approach is one of consequentialist science: designing creative studies that identify causal factors in health with multidisciplinary rigor. Distilled into nine foundational principles, this book guides readers through population science studies that strategically incorporate: · macrosocial factors · multilevel, lifecourse, and systems theories · prevention science fundamentals · return on investment · equity and efficiency Harnessing the power of scientific inquiry and codifying the knowledge base for a burgeoning field, POPULATION HEALTH SCIENCE arms readers with tools to shift the curve of population health.


Increasing Returns and Efficiency

Increasing Returns and Efficiency

Author: Martine Quinzii

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-01-07

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 0195362241

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Increasing returns to scale is an area in economics that has recently become the focus of much attention. While most firms operate under constant or decreasing return to scale on their relevant range of production, some firms produce goods or services with a technology which exhibits increasing returns to scale at levels of production which are large relative to the market. These goods are an important component of economic activity in a modern economy and are typically commodities produced either by a public sector or, as in the U.S., by regulated utilities. In this study, the author analyzes increasing returns using general equilibrium theory to take into account the interactions between production in the public and the private sector, and the effects of financing the public sector on the redistribution of income.


Accessibility, Equity and Efficiency

Accessibility, Equity and Efficiency

Author: Karst T. Geurs

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2016-02-26

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1784717894

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Leading researchers from around the world show, in this volume, the importance of accessibility in contemporary issues such as rural depopulation, investments in public services and public transport, and transport infrastructure investments in Europe. The trade-offs between accessibility, economic development and equity are comprehensively examined, and a variety of approaches to measuring accessibility and equality presented. The book’s interdisciplinary contributions also provide different geographical contexts, from the US to various European and developing countries, and cover ex ante and ex post evaluation of transport investment. Improving transport accessibility is a main objective in transport policy and planning in developed and developing countries all over the world. Investment is motivated by the need to develop and/or reduce spatial or social inequalities. However, the economic and equity implications of investments in transport are not straightforward. The concepts of accessibility and equity can be defined and operationalized in many different ways, influencing outcomes and conclusions. Moreover, equity and efficiency goals are often conflicting. Accessibility models not only help to explain spatial and transport patterns in developed and developing countries but are also powerful tools to explain the equity and efficiency impacts of urban and transport policies and projects. This state-of-the-art overview of the accessibility–economic efficiency–equity relationship will appeal to researchers as well as transport and urban planners interested in accessibility issues and transport/regional developments.


Efficiency, Equality and Public Policy

Efficiency, Equality and Public Policy

Author: Y. Ng

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2000-04-19

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 0333992776

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This book provides compelling arguments for the exclusive concern with efficiency ('a dollar is a dollar') in all specific areas of public economic policy, leaving the objective of equality to be achieved through the general tax/transfer system. Public policies should ultimately maximize the sum of individual welfares which should be individual happiness rather than preferences. Relative-income and environmental disruption effects cause a bias in favour of private spending which is no longer conducive to happiness socially. Welfare can be increased more by higher public spending on research and environmental protection, including the perfection of the techniques of brain stimulation to increase happiness.


Equity, Efficiency and Growth

Equity, Efficiency and Growth

Author: Mario Baldassarri

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-23

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1349246492

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In the post-war period, spending on social security, health and education has grown continuously in the leading industrialized countries. The considerable size of this spending as a percentage of GDP together with the ageing population raise doubts on the sustainability of welfare spending. These doubts have been accompanied in recent years by an increasing awareness of the allocational inefficiencies and the distributive inequalities caused by the provision of some social services. The welfare state should therefore be reconstructed not only through readjustment of the social security system but also a change in unemployment benefits and the taxation of workers to avoid the perverse spiral that may be produced in the future by cuts in welfare benefits, growing unemployment and the need to further reduce the social security services.


The Internationalization of Equity Markets

The Internationalization of Equity Markets

Author: Jeffrey A. Frankel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0226260216

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This timely volume addresses three important recent trends in the internationalization of United States equity markets: extensive market integration through foreign investment and links among stock prices around the world; increasing securitization as countries such as Japan come to rely more than ever before on markets in equities and bonds at the expense of banks; and the opening of national financial systems of newly industrializing countries to international financial flows and institutions, as governments remove capital controls and other barriers. Eight essays examine such issues as the current extent of international market integration, gains to U.S. investors through international diversification, home-country bias in investing, the role of time and location around the world in stock trading, and the behavior of country funds. Other, long-standing questions about equity markets are also addressed, including market efficiency and the accuracy of models of expected returns, with a particular focus on variances, covariances, and the price of risk according to the Capital Asset Pricing Model.