Search results

We investigate the relationship between the notion of progressive taxation and inequality reduction under a general version of the concept of inequality equivalence. We consider a two-parameter formalization of the concept of inequality equivalence that both includes, as special cases, the intermediate inequality equivalence and the path-independent/unit-consistent inequality equivalence. Both criteria could range from relative to absolute inequality views as the parameters in the formulation change. For the path-independent/unit-consistent inequality equivalence the condition of nondecreasing average tax rate is necessary and sufficient to guarantee the inequality-reducing effect of taxation for all the inequality views in between the relative and the absolute.

Much of the theoretical literature on inequality assumes that the equalisand is a cardinal variable like income or wealth. However, health status is generally measured as a categorical variable expressing a qualitative order. Traditional solutions involve reclassifying the variable by means of qualitative models and relying on inequality measures that are mean independent. We argue that the way status is conceptualised has important theoretical implications for measurement as well as for policy analysis. We also bring to the data a recently proposed approach to measuring self-reported health inequality that meets both rigorous and practical considerations. We draw upon the World Health Survey data to examine alternative pragmatic methods for making health-inequality comparisons. Findings suggest significant differences in health-inequality measurement and that regional and country patterns of inequality orderings do not coincide with any reasonable categorisation of countries by health system organisation.

Evidences show that the annual total of all incidents along with the number of bombing incidents steadily rose through the late 1970s and began a steady decline in the early 1990s. Before the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, the motivation of transnational terrorism was primarily nationalism, separatism, Marxist ideology, and nihilism. The jump in the number of incidents in the early 1980s corresponded to the rise of religious-based fundamentalism. The downward trend in the early 1990s is attributed to the demise of the Soviet Union. A surge in religious fervor and the hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan account for the prevailing high levels of transnational terrorism. Terrorism surely affects the economy as a whole both in terms of domestic and international trade-related parameters. In this chapter we have used a general equilibrium trade model with special emphasis on terrorism activities to capture the impact of international trade on the production system of the assumed stylized developing economy. In this connection, the presence of defense sector dualism to control or defend the domestic economy has been considered from the perspective of terrorism attack, thereby helping to relate defense, terrorism, and trade within a single framework. Apart from these, the terrorism augmented welfare aspect of the said developing economy has also been introduced in this chapter. Overall, we have claimed that the gains from trade in the presence of terrorism augmented externality exclusively depend on the pattern of trade.

The Wikipedia (2008) entry for mathematical sociology cites four books with ‘mathematical sociology’ in the title: Coleman (1964), Fararo (1973), Leik and Meeker (1975) and Bonacich (2008). Fararo (1973, pp. 764–766) provides a guide to the literature in mathematical sociology covering journals, bibliographies, reviews and expository essays, readers, texts, original monographs and research papers. Many of the references are either broader than mathematical sociology, for example, concerning the behavioural sciences in general, or narrower, dealing with a particular topic within sociology, or concerning a related field such as social psychology. Three classical original monographs are identified: Dodd (1942), Zipf (1949) and Rashevsky (1951). Included in a second generation of monographs is Coleman's (1964) ‘An Introduction to Mathematical Sociology’. Could it be that this is the first use of the phrase ‘mathematical sociology’?

There is a long-going discussion in Russia focusing on finding new stimulus for economic growth. Being very rich with natural recourses, Russia has enjoyed extensive economic growth model for many centuries. The world is changing. Russia as any country which is to keep up with the dynamics and the quality of the world economic growth must find some new technologies and economic triggers. Green investment can be regarded as the key instrument to achieve faster economic growth and to make technological gap narrower. The chapter focuses on state policy and business practice in green investment in Russia.

This paper produces a comprehensive assessment of income redistribution to the working-age population, covering OECD countries over the last two decades. Redistribution is quantified as the relative reduction in market income inequality achieved by personal income taxes (PIT), employees’ social security contributions, and cash transfers, based on household-level micro-data. A detailed decomposition analysis uncovers the respective roles of size, tax progressivity, and transfer targeting for overall redistribution, the respective role of various categories of transfers for transfer redistribution; as well as redistribution for various income groups. The paper shows a widespread decline in redistribution across the OECD, both on average and in the majority of countries for which data going back to the mid-1990s are available. This was primarily associated with a decline in cash transfer redistribution while PIT played a less important and more heterogeneous role across countries. In turn, the decline in the redistributive effect of cash transfers reflected a decline in their size and in particular by less redistributive insurance transfers. In some countries, this was mitigated by more redistributive assistance transfers but the resulting increase in the targeting of total transfers was not sufficient to prevent transfer redistribution from declining.

This study examined educators’ self-perception as practitioners of inquiry-based math and science instruction, their motivation to produce videos to share that practice, and the impact of video production on their use of inquiry and role in the professional development community. Semi-structured interviews were used to address the research questions. Participant responses indicated a high level of self-reflection and a keen understanding of the nature of inquiry-based math and science teaching. Participants were motivated to share their practice largely by their desire to help other educators develop as inquiry practitioners. Articulating how and why they used inquiry-based techniques for the videos deepened their already reflective teaching. The positive aspects of participation also increased their confidence in their ability to engage in professional development as teacher-leaders. Overall this study indicated that videos created for the purposes of professional development had a transforming effect on those who produced them in addition to their benefit for others.

The analysis of cultural consumption centers on the influence of individual characteristics (mainly social class). However, this chapter proposes that this relationship is contextual. More specifically, this relationship varies according to the nature of local cultural scenes where people live. In order to show the contextual impact of cultural scenes, we analyze a representative survey among a Spanish population. Three main conclusions are drawn. First, two main dimensions explain the patterns of cultural consumption by the Spanish population: the classical distinction between popular and high culture, and the distinction between conventional and unconventional cultural practices. Second, other characteristics, beside social class, are important to explain the implication of population in different patterns of cultural consumption, for instance, age; young people are oriented toward more unconventional practices regardless of their social class. Third, local cultural scenes matter: the difference between cultural practices of different groups (for instance, young and old people) is reduced in municipalities oriented toward unconventionality, showing an “assimilation contextual effect.” This contextual effect also has some impact upon local cultural policies that we mention briefly.

The analysis of lifestyles and cultural consumption has focused mainly on determining the impact of individual attributes on the types of practices developed by individuals. However, the effect of the access or exposure to certain opportunities of cultural consumption is less frequently analyzed, or even whether this exposure has different effects according to different social groups. The analysis of this issue is one of the objectives of the “Cultural Scene” research program, which is being developed under the project “Cultural Dynamics of Cities.” In this chapter, we try to determine whether existing cultural scenes in different municipalities influence how Spanish residents develop their cultural practices, with data from a nationally representative survey.