Income taxation and equity: new dominance criteria with a microsimulation application

The Journal of Economic Inequality - This paper addresses the problem of the normative evaluation of income tax systems and income tax reforms. While most of the existing criteria, framed in the...     

Non-experts’ participation in processes of scientific knowledge creation: The case of Citizen Science

Public participation in science and technology, is currently being encouraged in order to fulfil the calls for a more engaging, transparent, and ethical way of governing technoscientific innovation. Several institutional documents argue for the need to enrol non-scientists into research programs; funding schemes devoted to public engagement seem to be paving the way for new baselines for knowledge creation and innovation paths that include the contributions of citizens. Citizen Science stands out as an opportune movement to lead non-scientists to contribute to scientific research projects and technological innovation, and it has given rise to a broad debate intersecting many sociological aspects linked to participation and community empowerment. However, the participation of non-scientists in data collection, analysis, and interpretation is not totally new; yet it has not had the same value across time, nor has it always been considered desirable. Indeed, volunteers' engagement and amateurs' contributions have been regulated differently compared to the current rhetoric of participation. This paper gives an account of the evolution of participation of non-experts through the lens of Science and Technology Studies, investigating its desirability, how it is governed, and whether it matches the promises of Citizen Science practitioners.     

Regional Well-Being and its Inequality in the OECD Member Countries

This paper analyses the inequality between the regions of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries by using stochastic multi-objective acceptability analysis and the associated multivariate Gini index. By considering a large number of possible combinations of weights, the distribution of the potential rankings for each region is used to measure multidimensional inequality both within and between countries. Our results show that beyond the expected two clubs of rich and poor countries, a third group of countries emerges that belongs neither to the top nor to the bottom of the ranking, an outcome that can be attributed to the presence of significant economic differences among regions within those countries. Most of the inequality lies between countries, but regional well-being also significantly varies within the same countries and we find an inverse U-shape connection between regional well-being and its inequality within the OECD member countries.

     

Why Rates of Growth of Employment Differ: A Quantitative Approach to an International Comparison

ABSTRACT: This essay aims at presenting a quantitative assessment of the incidence of structural differences in output and employment composition, and of differential dynamics of the sectoral production and productivity, in order to explain the divergences in net employment growth in advanced market economies. The point of reference is the extremely divergent record, in terms of employment creation, of the United States on one hand, and Western European countries on the other. In the period 1973-80, for example, although the average growth rates of GNP were, on a cyclical average, similar in the U. S. A. and the EEC areas as a whole, additional job openings were about 14 million in the USA against less than half a million in the EEC. A structural, medium-run differential in the aggregate Employment/GNP elasticity appears to have characterized the performances of these economic systems. The 'source’of this differential are analyzed, utilizing a model of sectoral decomposition of employment and output trends. Simulation exercises are carried out, in order to assess the specific role of productivity, sectoral demand composition and sectoral employment composition, in determining the overall elasticity result. The comparative analysis takes into consideration the differential factors for the USA and Japan, together with the four major Western European countries (German Fed. Rep., France, Italy, and the United Kingdom).     

A Subjective Spin on Roulette Wheels

We provide a simple behavioral definition of ‘subjective mixture’ of acts for a large class of (not necessarily expected‐utility) preferences. Subjective mixtures enjoy the same algebraic properties as the ‘objective mixtures’ used to great advantage in the decision setting introduced by Anscombe and Aumann (1963). This makes it possible to formulate mixture‐space axioms in a fully subjective setting. For illustration, we present simple subjective axiomatizations of some models of choice under uncertainty, including Bewley's model of choice with incomplete preferences (2002).