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This paper examines the impact of residents’ human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, using China’s provincial panel data from 1997 to 2013. The results show that, at the national level as well as at the regional level, residents’ overall human capital investment inequality has a positive significant impact on the urban–rural income gap. In addition, the impact of overall human capital investment inequality increased monotonically from the eastern region inward to the western region. In terms of the relative impact of each component of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, migration investment inequality appears to have the greatest impact at the national level, whereas health investment inequality has the greatest impact on the urban–rural income gap in the eastern region, and education investment inequality exhibits the greatest impact in the central and western regions. We also investigate the impact of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap over different periods. The results show that residents’ overall human capital investment inequality had a positive impact on the urban–rural income gap in the period 1997–2008, but the impact rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Furthermore, the impact of residents’ health investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap shows a downward trend, and the impact of residents’ education investment inequality trended slightly upward from 1997 to 2008, and then rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Finally, the impact of residents’ migration investment inequality was only significant in 1997–2002.

The Old Farmer Pension Program (OFPP) represents Taiwan’s long-standing efforts aiming at improving farm household income and well-being; however, how effective the pension program is in terms of achieving the policy agenda has remained unclear. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Based on data drawn from the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure during 1999–2013, two identification strategies are used to examine the effect of OFPP. First the authors apply the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to address the concern if the program reaches the socially/economically disadvantaged farm households. The second identification strategy involves using the static and dynamic decomposition approaches to identify the major factors contributing to farm household income inequality and the redistribution role of the OFPP.

Results from the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition indicate that about 60 percent of the income gap can be eliminated if the pension recipients’ socio-economic characteristics are the same as the non-recipient group, suggesting it is the disadvantaged group that receives the old farmer pension. Moreover, the results suggest the significant contributions of household investments in health and human capital as well as diversification toward nonfarm activities, to income inequality among Taiwan’s farm households. Results from the dynamic decomposition suggest that the first-wave adjustment of the OFPP enlarges farm household income inequality, the following two waves of adjustment, however, plays an equalizing role.

This study adds to the literature by providing a methodological refinement promoting the view that it calls for the use of the dynamic (change) decomposition framework to investigate the inequality-enlarging or inequality-equalizing role each income determinant plays.

Due to greater returns to high skill and desirable amenities, high-skilled workers are increasingly agglomerating in metropolitan areas and form path dependence. This chapter explores whether the land supply policy of China constraining big cities' urban construction land quota strengthens the spatial divergence of human capital. Using city-level land supply data, population census data, and land transaction micro data, we find that the higher the degree of a city's land supply lagging behind land demand, the greater the enlargement effect of the initial share of population with college degrees on the increase in share of population with college degrees. Further research reveals that the main mechanism causing this phenomenon is the rapidly rising housing prices hindering low-skill labor flows to big cities.

This article aims to analyze the workers' probabilities of following their parents’ occupational legacy and whether these individuals are paid differently compared to those who opted for occupations different from their parents, in Brazil.

To that end, the occupational legacy probability equation was estimated as the quantile wage equations with sample selection bias correction and the wage decomposition for Brazil from the microdata of the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) of 2014. It was found that families have a strong influence on the process of choosing the careers of their children. The average probability of a young person following the occupational legacy of their parents was 41.63%. This percentage is different when analyzing different groups of individuals, such as being male or female, being in a traditional or single parent family, being in an income household lower or higher per capita.

The results also confirm the hypothesis that workers who tend to follow the occupational legacy have lower wages than individuals who choose other occupations and that this may cause a “poverty trap” since the lower the salary quantile, the stronger the “trap” as economically disadvantaged young people tend to follow in their parents' footsteps and to contribute to family income they face a tradeoff, opt between work or study, which ends up disrupting their education and forcing young people to entering the job market early, performing secondary occupations with lower income and arduous work, generating a “vicious cycle of poverty”.

Given the database, we are comprised to its most recent version.

This is the first work on Latin American problem of occupational legacy.

This is the first work on Latin American problem of occupational legacy.

The market is a complex organism that has rich implications and essential stipulations. From the property right perspective, the market is a series of property rights, rules, and system arrangements (an aggregation of rights), which are constructed, owned, operated, and managed by the state and from which the government can benefit. The market property right is owned by the government (state). The costs of market property right include tangible (explicit) cost, system cost, human cost, and other cost components. The study on the cost components of market property right is conducive to establishing the principle of matching investment with ownership, matching investment with income, and integrating (unifying) cost with efficiency.

Global participation in higher education has expanded greatly since the late twentieth century. The implications for the cultural, social, and economic fabric of societies have been substantial. To explain transitions from elite to mass higher education systems, theoretical insights from Technical-functionalism, Neo-institutionalism, World Academic System, and Credentialism perspectives have been put forward. It is the contention of this paper that there are emerging and complementary factors driving steadily growing participation in “high-income” universal higher education systems. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

With reference to Ulrich Beck’s concept of the “risk society”, it is discussed how higher education participation is increasingly a response by young people (and their families) seeking to mitigate heightened instability in work and employment under a “risk regime”. Publicly available data from national and supra-national organisations are used to evidence trends and support the arguments put forward by this paper.

Participation is perceived as quasi-compulsory to “survive” amid concern that those without higher education attainment are being “left behind” in modern labour markets. This environment has contributed to more students from more diverse backgrounds viewing higher education as the only viable option to secure a livelihood regardless of rising private costs of participation and rising uncertainty over graduate employment outcomes. The expansion of higher education has therefore potentially developed a self-perpetuating dynamic as the perceived cost of non-participation escalates.

It is shown that to better understand higher education participation in “high-income” countries with universal higher education systems, one needs to consider the conceptual idea of “survivalism”, that underlines risk and the vulnerabilities of modern societies.

The creation and distribution of human capital, often termed talent, has been recognised in economic geography as an important factor in the locational decisions of firms (Florida, 2002), and at a more general level as a key driver of economic growth (Romer, 1990). The purpose of this paper is to consider how talent is created and distributed across the cities of the UK and the key factors which are driving this spatial distribution. They also consider what the economic outcomes of these disparities are for cities.

The multivariate models can estimate the dynamic inter-relationships between human capital (talent), innovative capacity, and economic value added. These can be estimated, using talent as an example, in the form: human capital measure_i =α_0i+α_1i innovative capacity +α_2i quality of life + α_3i labour market indicators + α_4i economic indicators + α_5i HEI indicators + β_6i population demographics + β_7i population + υ_i.

The first finding is that talent is unequally distributed across cities, with some having three times more highly educated workers than others. Talent concentration at the city level is associated with entrepreneurial activity, culture, the presence of a university, and to a lesser degree the housing market. This feeds into more knowledge-based industry, which is associated with higher gross value added.

The research is limited in a practical sense by the fact that UK data at this level have only become available quite recently. Thus, it is only possible to capture talent flows and city growth in a relatively small window. But the prospects going forward will allow more detailed analysis at the city level of the relationship between talent flows and local economic growth. And additional insights could be considered relating to the on-going changes in the UK university system.

The question of whether universities are simply producers of talent or play a much broader and deeper role in the socio-economic landscape and outcomes of cities is an open one. This research has identified what the key drivers of city level economic growth and knowledge creation are, and sought to explain why some cities are capable of attracting and harnessing three times more talent than other cities. This has significant implications for the future development of UK cities and for those seeking to address these imbalances.

Universities are a major economic agent in their own right, but they are increasingly being asked to play a wider role in local economic development. The authors’ evidence suggests that universities do play a wider role in the growth and development of cities, but that there are large discrepancies in the subsequent spatial distribution of the talent they create. And this has significant implications for those seeking to address these imbalances and promote a broader and less unequal economic landscape.

The authors explore how cities create economic value via a process whereby talent is attracted and then this stimulates knowledge-based industry activity. The originality relates to several key aspects of the work. First, the authors look at the stock of talent, and then the authors explore how “new” talent from universities is attracted by looking at graduate flows around the cities of the UK, differentiating between top-level graduates and less talented graduates. The authors then allow a wide variety of economic, cultural, and population factors to influence the locational decision of talented people. The results highlight the complexity of this decision.

The aim of this paper is to extend a theoretical model due to Ljungqvist and data from a sample of 19 developing economies to empirically test it.

Data for all variables are from the 2005 Human Development Report and the 2006 World Development Report. The author applies the least‐squares estimation technique in a multivariate linear regression.

Based on data from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, the paper uses a sample of 19 developing economies and finds that cross‐country variations in income/consumption inequality may be explained by inequality of investment in human capital as measured by inequalities in child health as well as inequality in education and by inequality in the distribution of land as measured by the land Gini index.

Assuming a population consisting of skilled laborers, unskilled laborers, educators/health care personnel, and farmers, the paper shows that starting from an initial distribution of assets and in the absence of a perfect capital market along with human capital exhibiting increasing returns it is possible to have persistent inequality in the distribution of income or consumption. Regression results also are consistent with the theoretical implication of the model as the extent of inequality in land distribution and in access to education as well as inequalities in child health do linearly influence income or consumption inequality as measured by the ratio of the share of income or consumption accounted for by the richest quintile to that of the poorest quintile. As a result, if governments in developing countries aim to reduce inequality, they need to implement programs designed to reduce inequalities in child health by allowing children from the poorest of the poor to get fully immunized, which in turn would lead to a reduction in infant and child mortality and in education by providing low‐income families with means so that their children have better access to education. Government land policies, on the other hand, that succeed in reducing inequality in land distribution in developing countries, may be beneficial in terms of lessening income/expenditure inequality. Finally, while the present model does not test for the impact that improving capital markets would have, it stands to reason that improving capital markets could also have an impact on decreasing inequality.

In this paper the author uses a model due to Ljungqvist to show that individuals are relatively wealthy because they either own a fixed input such as land or they are able to invest in human capital, which in turn allow them to earn sufficient rent or labor income to remain wealthy. On the other hand, poor people either do not own land or are not capable of investing in human capital, and, as a result, earn low incomes and remain poor. This joint causation of factor endowment or human capital investment and income helps explain income distribution. Using data from the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank for a sample of 19 developing economies, it is found that cross‐country variations in income/consumption inequality may be explained by inequality of investment in human capital as measured by inequalities in child health as well as well as inequality in education and by inequality in the distribution of land as measured by the land Gini index. These results will help governments in developing countries identify areas that need to be improved upon in order to reduce income/consumption inequality.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.