Download or read book To What Extent Can Long Term Investment in Infrastructure Reduce Inequality written by Emma Hooper and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By reviewing US state-level panel data on infrastructure spending and on per capita income inequality from 1950 to 2010, this paper sets out to test whether there is an empirical link between infrastructure and inequality. Our main result, obtained from panel regressions with both state and time fixed effects, shows that highways and higher education spending growth in a given decade correlates negatively with Gini indices at the end of the decade. Such a finding suggests a causal effect from growth in infrastructure spending to a reduction in inequality, through better access to job and education opportunities. More significantly, this relationship is stronger with inequality at the bottom 40 per cent of the income distribution. In addition, infrastructure expenditures on highways are shown to be more effective at reducing inequality. A counterfactual experiment reveals which US states ended up with a significantly higher bottom Gini coefficient in 2010 that is attributed to underinvestment in infrastructure over the first decade of the 21st century. From a policy making perspective, this paper aims to present innovations in finance for infrastructure investments, for the US, other industrially advanced countries and also for developing economies.
Download or read book Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment written by Edward L. Glaeser and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Policy-makers often call for expanding public spending on infrastructure, which includes a broad range of investments from roads and bridges to digital networks that will expand access to high-speed broadband. Some point to near-term macro-economic benefits and job creation, others focus on long-term effects on productivity and economic growth. This volume explores the links between infrastructure spending and economic outcomes, as well as key economic issues in the funding and management of infrastructure projects. It draws together research studies that describe the short-run stimulus effects of infrastructure spending, develop new estimates of the stock of U.S. infrastructure capital, and explore the incentive aspects of public-private partnerships (PPPs). A salient issue is the treatment of risk in evaluating publicly-funded infrastructure projects and in connection with PPPs. The goal of the volume is to provide a reference for researchers seeking to expand research on infrastructure issues, and for policy-makers tasked with determining the appropriate level of infrastructure spending"--
Download or read book Infrastructure and Economic Growth in Asia written by John Cockburn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public spending on infrastructure plays an important role in promoting economic growth and poverty alleviation. Empirical studies unequivocally show that under-investment in infrastructure limit economic growth. At the same time, numerous other studies have shown that investment in infrastructure can be a highly effective tool in fighting poverty reduction1. In that context, the financing of infrastructure has been a critical element of most economic growth and poverty reduction strategies in developing countries, since the start of this millennium. This book provides a comparative analysis of the aggregate and sectoral implications of higher spending on infrastructure in three very different Asian countries: China, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Particular attention is paid to the role of alternative financing mechanisms for increasing public infrastructure investment, namely distortionary and non-distortionary means of financing. The book will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers concerned with economic growth in developing countries.
Download or read book Quality Infrastructure Investment written by Naoyuki Yoshino and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High-quality infrastructure will boost regional economic development and reduce poverty and income inequality. The spill-over effects created by this high-quality infrastructure will be seen in the form of an increase in gross domestic product and tax revenue in the region. These positive effects can be utilized to address the gap between infrastructure demand and financing. Private−public partnerships (PPP) in infrastructure have been advocated for many years. However, PPP partners, such as insurance and pension funds, have been discouraged by the low rate of return from investing in quality infrastructure projects. This is because the main sources of revenue from infrastructure investment are user charges. This paper aims to provide a new mechanism for government and investors to utilize the spill-over effects of infrastructure projects and share them with infrastructure investors for a better rate of return in order to compensate their risk. This mechanism will motivate stakeholders to design infrastructure with high economic benefits and encourage instruments, such as city infrastructure concepts, hometown investment trusts, land trusts, and the improvement of education and digital literacy, to ensure the infrastructure projects will create positive spill-overs to the region. Hometown investment trust funds can provide financing for start-up businesses along with the new infrastructure investments. Land trusts will solve the issue of owners not wanting to sell their land by giving them the option to keep it and lease the land to infrastructure companies. The landowners can receive long-term rent income, for example for 99 years. In this way, land trusts will smoothen the use of land and transfer the usage rights to infrastructure companies.
Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 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.
Download or read book Impact of Transport Infrastructure Investment on Regional Development written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2002-05-23 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report describes evaluation methods for transport infrastructure investments to ensure that scarce resources are allocated in a way that maximises their net return to society.
Download or read book Globalization and Poverty written by Ann Harrison and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.
Download or read book Reallocating Public Spending to Reduce Income Inequality Can It Work written by Djeneba Doumbia and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-09-06 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a government reduce income inequality by changing the composition of public spending while keeping the total level of expenditure fixed? Using newly assembled data on spending composition for 83 countries across all income groups, this paper shows that reallocating spending toward social protection and infrastructure is associated with reduced income inequality, particularly when it is financed through cuts in defense spending. However, the political and security situation matters. The analysis does not find evidence that lowering defense spending to finance infrastructure and social outlays improves income distribution in countries with weak institutions and at higher risk of conflict. Reallocating social protection and infrastructure spending towards other types of spending tends to increase income inequality. Accounting for the long-term impact of health spending, and particularly education spending, helps to better capture the equalizing effects of these expenditures. The paper includes a discussion of the implications of the findings for Indonesia, a major emerging market where income inequality is at the center of policy issues.
Download or read book How the Stock Market Works written by Michael Becket and published by Kogan Page Publishers. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now more than ever, people are being affected by the fluctuations in the global economy and by financial uncertainty - with major impacts on their savings, portfolios and pensions. Fully updated for this fourth edition, How the Stock Market Works tells investors what is being traded and how, who does what with whom, and how to evaluate a particular share or bond in light of rival claims from critics and admirers. From the practical consequences of being a shareholder to a basic coverage of the taxation regime, the book provides a wealth of information on individual product types as well as the key players themselves.
Download or read book Growth with Equity written by Martin Neil Baily and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly two decades the U.S. economy has been plagued by two disturbing economic trends: the slowdown in the growth rates of productivity and average real wages and the increase in wage and income inequality. The federal budget is in chronic deficit. Imports have far exceeded exports for more than a decade. American competitiveness has been a source of concern for even longer. Many Americans worry that foreigners are buying up U.S. companies, that the economy is losing its manufacturing base, and that the gap between rich and poor is widening. In this book three of the nation's most noted economists look at the primary reasons for these trends and assess which of the many suggestions for change in policy—whether for increased tax incentives for investment, education reform, or accelerated research and development—are likely to work and which may not work and could even hinder economic development. The author's discuss a variety of issues connected with deindustrialization and diminished competitiveness, distinguishing between problems that would be of real concern and those that should not. They evaluate explanations for slow growth in aggregate productivity in the United States and its relation to slower growth in other industrialized countries. They discuss the performance of the various sectors of the U.S. economy and systematically examine the evidence for and against the major proposals for correcting the adverse trends in productivity and inequity. Growth With Equity clearly explains how the country can accomplish the challenge of accelerating growth and narrowing the gap that separates the rich from the poor. While recognizing that some of their recommendations may be politically painful, the authors stress the importance of adopting a purposeful, long-range policy to encourage growth, ensure equity, and reduce the government's equity.
Download or read book Growth in Sub Saharan Africa written by Mr.Dhaneshwar Ghura and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1995-12-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a large sample of sub-Saharan African countries during 1981-92. The results indicate that (i) an increase in private investment has a relatively large positive impact on per capita growth; (ii) growth is stimulated by public policies that lower the budget deficit in relation to GDP (without reducing government investment), reduce the rate of inflation, maintain external competitiveness, promote structural reforms, encourage human capital development, and slow population growth; and (iii) convergence of per capita income occurs after controlling for human capital development and public policies.
Download or read book Links Between Growth Inequality and Poverty A Survey written by Ms. Valerie Cerra and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-03-12 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.
Download or read book Infrastructure and Inequality written by Santanu Chatterjee and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We develop a model in which public capital is both an engine of growth and a determinant of the distributions of wealth, income, and welfare. Government investment increases wealth inequality over time, regardless of its financing. The time path of income inequality is, however, highly sensitive to financing policies, and is often characterized by sharp intertemporal tradeoffs, with income inequality declining in the short run but increasing in the long run. Public investment generates a positive correlation between growth and income inequality along the transition path, but their short-run and long-run relationship depends critically on (i) how externalities impinge on allocation decisions, (ii) financing policies, and (iii) the time period of consideration. Finally, these policies also generate sharp trade-offs between average welfare and its distribution, with government investment improving average welfare, but also increasing its dispersion. Our results are obtained numerically but extensive sensitivity analysis confirms their robustness across key parameter values.
Download or read book Unbound written by Heather Boushey and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many fear that efforts to address inequality will undermine the economy as a whole. But the opposite is true: rising inequality has become a drag on growth and an impediment to market competition. Heather Boushey breaks down the problem and argues that we can preserve our nation's economic traditions while promoting shared economic growth.
Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
Download or read book Partially Awakened Giants written by Shubham Chaudhuri and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: The paper examines the ways in which recent economic growth has been uneven in China and India and what this has meant for inequality and poverty. Drawing on analyses based on existing household survey data and aggregate data from official sources, the authors show that growth has indeed been uneven-geographically, sectorally, and at the household level-and that this has meant uneven progress against poverty, less poverty reduction than might have been achieved had growth been more balanced, and an increase in income inequality. The paper then examines why growth was uneven and why this should be of concern. The discussion is structured around the idea that there are both "good" and "bad" inequalities-drivers and dimensions of inequality and uneven growth that are good or bad in terms of what they imply for both equity and long-term growth and development. The authors argue that the development paths of both China and India have been influenced by, and have generated, both types of inequalities and that while good inequalities-most notably those that reflect the role of economic incentives-have been critical to the growth experience thus far, there is a risk that bad inequalities-those that prevent individuals from connecting to markets and limit investment and accumulation of human capital and physical capital-may undermine the sustainability of growth in the coming years. The authors argue that policies are needed that preserve the good inequalities-continued incentives for innovation and investment-but reduce the scope for bad ones, notably through investments in human capital and rural infrastructure that help the poor connect to markets.
Download or read book Reducing Inequalities written by Rémi Genevey and published by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reduction of inequalities within and between countries stands as a policy goal, and deserves to take centre stage in the design of the Sustainable Development Goals agreed during the Rio+20 Summit in 2012.The 2013 edition of A Planet for Life represents a unique international initiative grounded on conceptual and strategic thinking, and – most importantly – empirical experiments, conducted on five continents and touching on multiple realities. This unprecedented collection of works proposes a solid empirical approach, rather than an ideological one, to inform future debate.The case studies collected in this volume demonstrate the complexity of the new systems required to accommodate each country's specific economic, political and cultural realities. These systems combine technical, financial, legal, fiscal and organizational elements with a great deal of applied expertise, and are articulated within a clear, well-understood, growth- and job-generating development strategy.Inequality reduction does not occur by decree; neither does it automatically arise through economic growth, nor through policies that equalize incomes downward via ill conceived fiscal policies. Inequality reduction involves a collaborative effort that must motivate all concerned parties, one that constitutes a genuine political and social innovation, and one that often runs counter to prevailing political and economic forces.
