This paper provides an empirical test of the Engerman-Sokoloff hypothesis that factor endowments influenced the development of the rule of law, which in turn has shaped the income distribution. Using a measure of the suitability of land for growing wheat relative to sugarcane as an instrument for the rule of law, as measured by area 2 of the Economic Freedom of the World index, we estimate the potential causal impact of the rule of law on the long-run net income inequality. Conditioning on geography, ethnolinguistic fractionalization and legal tradition, the rule of law exerts a negative impact on inequality that is both economically and statistically significant. The results are robust to additional control variables, two alternative measures of the rule of law, an alternative instrumental variable, and the exclusion of strategic country samples and outliers.
{"title":"Factor Endowments, the Rule of Law & Structural Inequality: Testing the Engerman-Sokoloff Hypothesis","authors":"D. Bennett","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2634074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2634074","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides an empirical test of the Engerman-Sokoloff hypothesis that factor endowments influenced the development of the rule of law, which in turn has shaped the income distribution. Using a measure of the suitability of land for growing wheat relative to sugarcane as an instrument for the rule of law, as measured by area 2 of the Economic Freedom of the World index, we estimate the potential causal impact of the rule of law on the long-run net income inequality. Conditioning on geography, ethnolinguistic fractionalization and legal tradition, the rule of law exerts a negative impact on inequality that is both economically and statistically significant. The results are robust to additional control variables, two alternative measures of the rule of law, an alternative instrumental variable, and the exclusion of strategic country samples and outliers.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"121 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123704869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper suggests an approach that reshapes the market for recruitment services by engaging with employers in destination countries at the top of the labour supply chain, who could play a key role in influencing the recruitment business worldwide. It presents several case studies through which this approach was tested through regulatory efforts, such as the Philippines, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, several Canadian provinces; and in three agreements negotiated with employers by United States agricultural workers’ organizations to govern the terms of recruitment for migrant workers further down the chain. This paper draws on these public and private sectors’ case studies to propose regulatory and market approaches that promote fair recruitment practices.
{"title":"Global Labour Recruitment in a Supply Chain Context","authors":"J. Gordon","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2518519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2518519","url":null,"abstract":"The paper suggests an approach that reshapes the market for recruitment services by engaging with employers in destination countries at the top of the labour supply chain, who could play a key role in influencing the recruitment business worldwide. \u0000\u0000It presents several case studies through which this approach was tested through regulatory efforts, such as the Philippines, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, several Canadian provinces; and in three agreements negotiated with employers by United States agricultural workers’ organizations to govern the terms of recruitment for migrant workers further down the chain. \u0000\u0000This paper draws on these public and private sectors’ case studies to propose regulatory and market approaches that promote fair recruitment practices.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126106835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act definition of marriage as “between one man and one woman,” heralding its subsequent recognition, in Obergefell v. Hodges, of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Windsor cleared the way for same-sex couples to be treated as married under federal tax laws, and the Obama administration promptly announced that it would recognize same-sex marriages for tax purposes. Academics, policymakers, and activists lauded these developments as finally achieving tax equality between same- and different-sex married couples. This Article argues that the claimed tax equality of Windsor is illusory and that the only way to achieve actual equality is to eliminate taxation on the basis of marital status.Focusing on the taxation of women in same-sex marriages, the Article explores what lies beneath the putative equality gains that result from according same-sex married couples the same status as different-sex married couples. The Article predicts, based on demographic statistics and other sociological and economic research relating to income levels, wealth holdings, child rearing, and employment patterns, that women in same-sex marriages will be less likely than other married people to reap the benefits, and more likely to suffer the detriments, of marriage taxation. In analyzing why women in same-sex marriages are likely to suffer adverse consequences from their new tax status as married, the Article builds on prior critical and feminist tax literature showing how the tax law — though purportedly neutral in its treatment of married couples — privileges traditional marriages in which men are the primary income earners and wealth holders, and adversely affects married women’s incentives and abilities to be workers, income producers, and wealth holders. The Article argues that the tax law, through the fictitious construction of the married couple as an irreducible economic unit, continues to reward this anachronistic model of marriage and to penalize other, more egalitarian models of marriage. The Article proposes that taxation on the basis of marital status be curtailed through the abolition of the joint return and through other reforms. More broadly, the Article demonstrates how taxation is a powerful tool by which the state regulates intimate relationships, and it highlights the need for a careful and critical evaluation of other marriage laws as they extend their reach to same-sex relationships.
在美国诉温莎案(United States v. Windsor)中，最高法院宣布《婚姻保护法》(Defense of Marriage Act)将婚姻定义为“一男一女之间”的行为无效，这预示着随后在奥贝格费尔诉霍奇斯案(Obergefell v. Hodges)中，最高法院承认了同性婚姻的宪法权利。温莎案为同性伴侣在联邦税法下被视为已婚扫清了道路，奥巴马政府迅速宣布，出于税收目的，它将承认同性婚姻。学者、政策制定者和活动人士称赞这些进展最终实现了同性和异性已婚夫妇之间的税收平等。本文认为，温莎所宣称的税收平等是虚幻的，实现真正平等的唯一途径是取消基于婚姻状况的税收。本文以同性婚姻中女性的税收为重点，探讨了同性婚姻伴侣与异性婚姻伴侣享有同等地位所带来的所谓平等收益背后的原因。根据人口统计和其他与收入水平、财富持有、子女抚养和就业模式有关的社会学和经济学研究，文章预测，同性婚姻中的女性比其他已婚人士更不可能从婚姻税中获益，而更有可能遭受婚姻税的损害。在分析为什么同性婚姻中的女性可能会因其已婚的新税收地位而遭受不利后果时，本文以先前的批评和女权主义税收文献为基础，展示了税法如何——尽管据称在对待已婚夫妇方面是中立的——赋予传统婚姻以男性是主要收入来源和财富持有者的特权，并对已婚女性成为工人、收入生产者和财富持有者的动机和能力产生不利影响。本文认为，税法通过将已婚夫妇虚构为不可分割的经济单位，继续奖励这种不合时宜的婚姻模式，并惩罚其他更平等的婚姻模式。该条建议通过取消共同纳税和其他改革来减少基于婚姻状况的税收。更广泛地说，该条款表明，税收是国家调节亲密关系的有力工具，它强调了对其他婚姻法进行仔细和批判性评估的必要性，因为它们将影响范围扩大到同性关系。
{"title":"The Not-So-Merry Wives of Windsor: The Taxation of Women in Same-Sex Marriages","authors":"Lily Kahng","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2481990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2481990","url":null,"abstract":"In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act definition of marriage as “between one man and one woman,” heralding its subsequent recognition, in Obergefell v. Hodges, of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Windsor cleared the way for same-sex couples to be treated as married under federal tax laws, and the Obama administration promptly announced that it would recognize same-sex marriages for tax purposes. Academics, policymakers, and activists lauded these developments as finally achieving tax equality between same- and different-sex married couples. This Article argues that the claimed tax equality of Windsor is illusory and that the only way to achieve actual equality is to eliminate taxation on the basis of marital status.Focusing on the taxation of women in same-sex marriages, the Article explores what lies beneath the putative equality gains that result from according same-sex married couples the same status as different-sex married couples. The Article predicts, based on demographic statistics and other sociological and economic research relating to income levels, wealth holdings, child rearing, and employment patterns, that women in same-sex marriages will be less likely than other married people to reap the benefits, and more likely to suffer the detriments, of marriage taxation. In analyzing why women in same-sex marriages are likely to suffer adverse consequences from their new tax status as married, the Article builds on prior critical and feminist tax literature showing how the tax law — though purportedly neutral in its treatment of married couples — privileges traditional marriages in which men are the primary income earners and wealth holders, and adversely affects married women’s incentives and abilities to be workers, income producers, and wealth holders. The Article argues that the tax law, through the fictitious construction of the married couple as an irreducible economic unit, continues to reward this anachronistic model of marriage and to penalize other, more egalitarian models of marriage. The Article proposes that taxation on the basis of marital status be curtailed through the abolition of the joint return and through other reforms. More broadly, the Article demonstrates how taxation is a powerful tool by which the state regulates intimate relationships, and it highlights the need for a careful and critical evaluation of other marriage laws as they extend their reach to same-sex relationships.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124699464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-01DOI: 10.18574/NYU/9781479827008.003.0002
Joseph Fishkin, William E. Forbath
We live in a time of profound and justified anxiety about economic opportunity. The number of Americans facing poverty is growing, opportunities for middle-class livelihoods are shrinking, and economic clout is becoming concentrated at the top to a degree that recalls the last Gilded Age. For reformers throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, economic circumstances like these posed not just an economic, social, or political problem but a constitutional one. A society with a “moneyed aristocracy” or a “ruling class,” these reformers understood, was an oligarchy, not a republic. This understanding was rooted in a constitutional discourse we have largely forgotten — one that this essay suggests we ought to reclaim. From the beginning of the Republic through roughly the New Deal, Americans vividly understood that the guarantees of the Constitution are intertwined with the structure of our economic life. This understanding was the foundation of a powerful constitutional discourse that today, with important but limited exceptions, lies dormant: a discourse of constitutional political economy. A powerful tradition of arguments, from the founding era through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sounded in this tradition: arguments that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our “republican form of government” — without (a) constitutional restraints against oligarchy, and (b) a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone. These are two of the central strands of what we call the democracy of opportunity tradition.Today, when we speak of “equal opportunity” and the Constitution, we usually think of a different idea, one more recognizable today as constitutional law: the idea of inclusion, which has its roots in Reconstruction and animates arguments that the Constitution requires us to include, on equal terms, those who have previously been excluded from important opportunities on grounds such as race and sex. This is the third strand of the democracy of opportunity tradition as we understand it.This essay, forthcoming in the journal NOMOS, tells the story of the democracy of opportunity tradition and the relations among its three principles--which have been fraught and often tragic. Generation after generation of white male champions of the first two principles of the democracy of opportunity tradition refused to include women and racial others. Later, the great triumphs of the principle of inclusion in the mid-twentieth century — the Civil Rights Revolution, the Great Society — were largely disconnected from the democracy of opportunity tradition. This was for a different reason: The Civil Rights Revolution and Great Society unfolded in an unprecedented moment of broadly shared prosperity; what remained to be done, it seemed, was to open the nation’s abundant middle-class opportunities to black America, women and other excluded “minorities.” Thus, the moment that marked the rebirth and great
{"title":"Wealth, Commonwealth, & the Constitution of Opportunity","authors":"Joseph Fishkin, William E. Forbath","doi":"10.18574/NYU/9781479827008.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18574/NYU/9781479827008.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"We live in a time of profound and justified anxiety about economic opportunity. The number of Americans facing poverty is growing, opportunities for middle-class livelihoods are shrinking, and economic clout is becoming concentrated at the top to a degree that recalls the last Gilded Age. For reformers throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, economic circumstances like these posed not just an economic, social, or political problem but a constitutional one. A society with a “moneyed aristocracy” or a “ruling class,” these reformers understood, was an oligarchy, not a republic. This understanding was rooted in a constitutional discourse we have largely forgotten — one that this essay suggests we ought to reclaim. From the beginning of the Republic through roughly the New Deal, Americans vividly understood that the guarantees of the Constitution are intertwined with the structure of our economic life. This understanding was the foundation of a powerful constitutional discourse that today, with important but limited exceptions, lies dormant: a discourse of constitutional political economy. A powerful tradition of arguments, from the founding era through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sounded in this tradition: arguments that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our “republican form of government” — without (a) constitutional restraints against oligarchy, and (b) a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone. These are two of the central strands of what we call the democracy of opportunity tradition.Today, when we speak of “equal opportunity” and the Constitution, we usually think of a different idea, one more recognizable today as constitutional law: the idea of inclusion, which has its roots in Reconstruction and animates arguments that the Constitution requires us to include, on equal terms, those who have previously been excluded from important opportunities on grounds such as race and sex. This is the third strand of the democracy of opportunity tradition as we understand it.This essay, forthcoming in the journal NOMOS, tells the story of the democracy of opportunity tradition and the relations among its three principles--which have been fraught and often tragic. Generation after generation of white male champions of the first two principles of the democracy of opportunity tradition refused to include women and racial others. Later, the great triumphs of the principle of inclusion in the mid-twentieth century — the Civil Rights Revolution, the Great Society — were largely disconnected from the democracy of opportunity tradition. This was for a different reason: The Civil Rights Revolution and Great Society unfolded in an unprecedented moment of broadly shared prosperity; what remained to be done, it seemed, was to open the nation’s abundant middle-class opportunities to black America, women and other excluded “minorities.” Thus, the moment that marked the rebirth and great","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122703526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-03-17DOI: 10.11575/SPPP.V8I0.42510
Ronald Kneebone, Meaghan Bell, N. Jackson, Ali Jadidzadeh
In 2008, Calgary was the first city in Canada to institute a 10-year plan to end homelessness. The plan was introduced in part due to the steady and rapid growth in homelessness in the city since 1992. Since 2008 growth in the number of homeless people has stopped despite a rapidly growing city. The number of people enumerated as homeless by point-in-time counts has fallen from 304 persons per 100,000 population to 256 persons per 100,000 population in 2014, a drop of more than 15 per cent. Looking beyond simple counts of the number of homeless people, we examine how people who are homeless use emergency shelters. Tracking shelter use over a five year period by nearly 33,000 individuals, we find that, contrary to what might be thought to be true, the great majority (86%) of people who use emergency shelters in Calgary do so very infrequently and for only short periods of time. Visiting shelters less than twice (on average), these “transitional” users stayed in shelters for an average of only 15 days spread during the five years of our study. Another 12% of people used emergency shelters more frequently; an average of 8 times spread over five years. These “episodic” users stayed for a total of 113 days on average. Only a tiny minority, just 1.6% of all shelter users, stayed in shelters for very long periods. These “chronic” users visited shelters an average of three and a half times and stayed a total of 928 days over the five years of our study. Because they stay in shelters for long periods, chronic shelter users occupy one-third of shelter beds. The implication of this is that finding stable, supportive housing for just 1.6% of those experiencing homeless – a total of about 900 individuals in Calgary -- would free-up one-third of beds in emergency shelters. Providing supportive housing for episodic users as well would free-up another one-third of beds and so enable shelter providers to focus on their main function as providers of emergency housing. Moving people from emergency shelters into supportive housing delivers savings in the form of reduced interactions for these people with the criminal justice and healthcare systems; savings that have been shown in other studies to significantly off-set the cost of supportive housing. Planning to end homelessness has always been an ambitious goal. While the homeless serving community has made significant gains in understanding how best to solve the problem, greater effort may be required of local, provincial and federal policy makers to find ways of resolving the issue that is at the heart of Calgary’s homelessness problem; namely, the lack of affordable rental accommodations.
{"title":"Who are the Homeless? Numbers, Trends and Characteristics of Those Without Homes in Calgary","authors":"Ronald Kneebone, Meaghan Bell, N. Jackson, Ali Jadidzadeh","doi":"10.11575/SPPP.V8I0.42510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.11575/SPPP.V8I0.42510","url":null,"abstract":"In 2008, Calgary was the first city in Canada to institute a 10-year plan to end homelessness. The plan was introduced in part due to the steady and rapid growth in homelessness in the city since 1992. Since 2008 growth in the number of homeless people has stopped despite a rapidly growing city. The number of people enumerated as homeless by point-in-time counts has fallen from 304 persons per 100,000 population to 256 persons per 100,000 population in 2014, a drop of more than 15 per cent. Looking beyond simple counts of the number of homeless people, we examine how people who are homeless use emergency shelters. Tracking shelter use over a five year period by nearly 33,000 individuals, we find that, contrary to what might be thought to be true, the great majority (86%) of people who use emergency shelters in Calgary do so very infrequently and for only short periods of time. Visiting shelters less than twice (on average), these “transitional” users stayed in shelters for an average of only 15 days spread during the five years of our study. Another 12% of people used emergency shelters more frequently; an average of 8 times spread over five years. These “episodic” users stayed for a total of 113 days on average. Only a tiny minority, just 1.6% of all shelter users, stayed in shelters for very long periods. These “chronic” users visited shelters an average of three and a half times and stayed a total of 928 days over the five years of our study. Because they stay in shelters for long periods, chronic shelter users occupy one-third of shelter beds. The implication of this is that finding stable, supportive housing for just 1.6% of those experiencing homeless – a total of about 900 individuals in Calgary -- would free-up one-third of beds in emergency shelters. Providing supportive housing for episodic users as well would free-up another one-third of beds and so enable shelter providers to focus on their main function as providers of emergency housing. Moving people from emergency shelters into supportive housing delivers savings in the form of reduced interactions for these people with the criminal justice and healthcare systems; savings that have been shown in other studies to significantly off-set the cost of supportive housing. Planning to end homelessness has always been an ambitious goal. While the homeless serving community has made significant gains in understanding how best to solve the problem, greater effort may be required of local, provincial and federal policy makers to find ways of resolving the issue that is at the heart of Calgary’s homelessness problem; namely, the lack of affordable rental accommodations.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121645091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From at least 1960-1986 the PikettySaez (P-S) data set understates the concentration of income among top income earners. Adjusting the P-S data series for income shifting in response to changes in income taxation for top earners shifts income shares upward for the years prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86). We calculate that adjusted income share of the top one percent of earners are overstated by over two percentage points for many of the years that the P-S series reports historically low income inequality. Our adjustment reflects just one aspect of major tax regime change during the past century, namely the relationship between the top marginal personal income tax rate and the corporate income tax rate. It is likely that adjustments for other changes in income tax law would lead to even greater increases in income shares during the high-marginal rate era between World War II and the mid-1980s.
{"title":"Do Piketty and Saez Understate U.S. Income Inequality?","authors":"George W. Mechling, Stephen C. Miller","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2056431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2056431","url":null,"abstract":"From at least 1960-1986 the PikettySaez (P-S) data set understates the concentration of income among top income earners. Adjusting the P-S data series for income shifting in response to changes in income taxation for top earners shifts income shares upward for the years prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86). We calculate that adjusted income share of the top one percent of earners are overstated by over two percentage points for many of the years that the P-S series reports historically low income inequality. Our adjustment reflects just one aspect of major tax regime change during the past century, namely the relationship between the top marginal personal income tax rate and the corporate income tax rate. It is likely that adjustments for other changes in income tax law would lead to even greater increases in income shares during the high-marginal rate era between World War II and the mid-1980s.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126240830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Most advanced democracies are thick with law and regulation, rules that structure almost all social and economic relationships. Yet ordinary Americans, unlike their peers in other advanced systems, face this law-thick landscape with relatively few legal resources at their disposal. In this chapter, an updated version of Hadfield Higher Demand Lower Supply? A Comparative Assessment of the Legal Resource Landscape for Ordinary Americans (2009), we document what little data exists on the performance of legal markets for non-corporate clients in the U.S. Our results suggest that while the U.S. has nearly twice as many lawyers as comparable countries on a per capita basis, Americans in fact confront the legal problems of daily life - housing, family, employment, finances, health - with relatively little access to affordable legal help. We begin with a ‘macro’ view, comparing the resources at an aggregate level that are devoted to the legal system in the U.S. as compared to other countries. We find that the U.S. operates with fewer public dollars, judges and even lawyers on a per case basis than other advanced countries. We then consider ‘micro’ data, specifically data on legal needs and use of legal resources, comparing the intensity of legal need and access to legal assistance across countries. Here too we find that Americans experience comparable rates of legal problems but both give up on those problems or manage them without legal help at higher rates than in other advanced countries. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the distinctively restrictive U.S. approach to regulating the legal profession can account for the diminished access to legal help experienced by Americans as compared to those in countries with more open legal markets such as the U.K. and the Netherlands.
{"title":"Life in the Law-Thick World: The Legal Resource Landscape for Ordinary Americans","authors":"Gillian K. Hadfield, Jamie Heine","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2547664","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2547664","url":null,"abstract":"Most advanced democracies are thick with law and regulation, rules that structure almost all social and economic relationships. Yet ordinary Americans, unlike their peers in other advanced systems, face this law-thick landscape with relatively few legal resources at their disposal. In this chapter, an updated version of Hadfield Higher Demand Lower Supply? A Comparative Assessment of the Legal Resource Landscape for Ordinary Americans (2009), we document what little data exists on the performance of legal markets for non-corporate clients in the U.S. Our results suggest that while the U.S. has nearly twice as many lawyers as comparable countries on a per capita basis, Americans in fact confront the legal problems of daily life - housing, family, employment, finances, health - with relatively little access to affordable legal help. We begin with a ‘macro’ view, comparing the resources at an aggregate level that are devoted to the legal system in the U.S. as compared to other countries. We find that the U.S. operates with fewer public dollars, judges and even lawyers on a per case basis than other advanced countries. We then consider ‘micro’ data, specifically data on legal needs and use of legal resources, comparing the intensity of legal need and access to legal assistance across countries. Here too we find that Americans experience comparable rates of legal problems but both give up on those problems or manage them without legal help at higher rates than in other advanced countries. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the distinctively restrictive U.S. approach to regulating the legal profession can account for the diminished access to legal help experienced by Americans as compared to those in countries with more open legal markets such as the U.K. and the Netherlands.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121598860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which is surely one of the very few economics treatises ever to be a best-seller, has parachuted into an intensely emotional and deeply divisive American debate: the problem of inequality in the United States. Piketty's core argument is that throughout history, the rate of return on private capital has usually exceeded the rate of economic growth, expressed by Piketty as the relation r > g. If true, this relation means that the wealthy class – who are the predominant owners of capital – will grow their wealth faster than economies grow, which means that relatively speaking, the non-wealthy will fall behind.But even if we accept Piketty's assertion that this has been an "historical fact," why is r > g most of the time? Piketty offers a few economic factors and a few legal rules, but mostly demurs as to why the "forces of [wealth] divergence" generally overwhelm the "forces of [wealth] convergence." This review argues that legal rules and institutions exhibit an inherent bias towards some forms of private capital, and serve to inflate returns to private capital – Piketty's r. Meanwhile, not only is it more difficult to make economic growth – Piketty's g – keep pace, but it is more contentious. The result is that returns to private capital have indeed commonly exceeded the rate of economic growth. This historical truism can be traceable to a capital-friendly bias that inheres in legal rules and institutions. The bias is particularly pronounced in several areas of law in which law and policy have inflated returns to private capital and driven it above the rate of economic growth, exacerbating economic inequality. This review closes by arguing for a greater attention paid to funding education, which is not only an equalizing "force of convergence," but also a predicate to economic growth.
托马斯·皮凯蒂(Thomas Piketty)的《21世纪资本论》(Capital in the Twenty-first Century)无疑是极少数成为畅销书的经济学著作之一，它空降到一场情绪激动、分歧严重的美国辩论中:美国的不平等问题。皮凯蒂的核心论点是，纵观历史，私人资本的回报率通常超过经济增长率，皮凯蒂将其表达为r > g的关系。如果这一关系成立，则意味着作为资本的主要所有者的富裕阶层的财富增长速度将快于经济增长，这意味着相对而言，非富裕阶层将落后。但是，即使我们接受皮凯蒂的断言，即这是一个“历史事实”，为什么大多数时候r > g ?皮凯蒂提出了一些经济因素和一些法律规则，但主要是对为什么“(财富)分化的力量”通常压倒“(财富)趋同的力量”提出异议。这篇评论认为，法律规则和制度对某些形式的私人资本表现出固有的偏见，并有助于提高私人资本的回报(皮凯蒂的r)。与此同时，不仅更难使经济增长(皮凯蒂的g)跟上步伐，而且更具争议性。其结果是，私人资本的回报率确实普遍超过了经济增长率。这种历史真理可以追溯到法律规则和制度中固有的对资本友好的偏见。这种偏见在几个法律领域尤为明显，在这些领域，法律和政策夸大了私人资本的回报，使其超过了经济增长率，加剧了经济不平等。本报告最后提出，应更多地关注教育资金，因为教育不仅是一种平衡的“趋同力量”，也是经济增长的一个先决条件。
{"title":"The Rise and Rise of the One Percent: Considering Legal Causes of Inequality","authors":"Shi-Ling Hsu","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2477991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2477991","url":null,"abstract":"Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which is surely one of the very few economics treatises ever to be a best-seller, has parachuted into an intensely emotional and deeply divisive American debate: the problem of inequality in the United States. Piketty's core argument is that throughout history, the rate of return on private capital has usually exceeded the rate of economic growth, expressed by Piketty as the relation r > g. If true, this relation means that the wealthy class – who are the predominant owners of capital – will grow their wealth faster than economies grow, which means that relatively speaking, the non-wealthy will fall behind.But even if we accept Piketty's assertion that this has been an \"historical fact,\" why is r > g most of the time? Piketty offers a few economic factors and a few legal rules, but mostly demurs as to why the \"forces of [wealth] divergence\" generally overwhelm the \"forces of [wealth] convergence.\" This review argues that legal rules and institutions exhibit an inherent bias towards some forms of private capital, and serve to inflate returns to private capital – Piketty's r. Meanwhile, not only is it more difficult to make economic growth – Piketty's g – keep pace, but it is more contentious. The result is that returns to private capital have indeed commonly exceeded the rate of economic growth. This historical truism can be traceable to a capital-friendly bias that inheres in legal rules and institutions. The bias is particularly pronounced in several areas of law in which law and policy have inflated returns to private capital and driven it above the rate of economic growth, exacerbating economic inequality. This review closes by arguing for a greater attention paid to funding education, which is not only an equalizing \"force of convergence,\" but also a predicate to economic growth.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125474109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Claudio A. Agostini, Marcela C. Perticara, Javiera Sélman
In recent decades, we have seen in Latin America an increase in the use of conditional cash transfer programs to fight poverty. Although these programs can be effective to improve the welfare of the poor in the short term and to guarantee a certain basic health care and education, they can also discourage employment, thus creating a poverty trap and a dependence on the social welfare system. In other regions of the world, the tax system has been used not only to redistribute income, but also to implement social policies. A good example is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the United States, which offers to lower-income individuals a reimbursable credit conditioned on working. This policy has simultaneously increased employment, reduced inequality and reduced poverty particularly among single mothers. This paper estimates, through simulation, the effect that a system like the EITC would have in Chile. The results show that a tax credit could increase employment and at the same time reduce poverty and inequality. Additionally, a comparison of the results to a simulation of the Ethical Family Income Program allows concluding that the EITC is more effective in increasing the income of individuals below the poverty line and it has a lower transfer cost per family.
{"title":"An Earned Income Tax Credit Proposal for Chile","authors":"Claudio A. Agostini, Marcela C. Perticara, Javiera Sélman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2761559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2761559","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, we have seen in Latin America an increase in the use of conditional cash transfer programs to fight poverty. Although these programs can be effective to improve the welfare of the poor in the short term and to guarantee a certain basic health care and education, they can also discourage employment, thus creating a poverty trap and a dependence on the social welfare system. In other regions of the world, the tax system has been used not only to redistribute income, but also to implement social policies. A good example is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the United States, which offers to lower-income individuals a reimbursable credit conditioned on working. This policy has simultaneously increased employment, reduced inequality and reduced poverty particularly among single mothers. This paper estimates, through simulation, the effect that a system like the EITC would have in Chile. The results show that a tax credit could increase employment and at the same time reduce poverty and inequality. Additionally, a comparison of the results to a simulation of the Ethical Family Income Program allows concluding that the EITC is more effective in increasing the income of individuals below the poverty line and it has a lower transfer cost per family.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"139 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123236420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How should land use regulators act when their communities are economically deprived? Land use regulation typically is viewed as passive; projects proceed when criteria established by ordinances are satisfied, but are delayed or scuttled when parameters of codes are unmet. Insufficient attention is directed by local governments to the economic impacts of any such events. The current employment and productivity perils of inner-ring suburbs, the lately-dismissed first ‘outskirts’ of metropolitan areas, recall the question whether expanding economic opportunity for every community citizen must dominate conversations among zoning administrations. Too many first suburbs are in decline, their citizens dismayed about their futures and helpless in some instances to act without government intervention. This paper describes how their local administrations, partnering with developers and citizens, must refocus efforts to revitalize inner-ring neighborhoods physically while growing job opportunities, in that process deploying familiar and novel land use regulation and related collaborative strategies. The paper addresses how administrators of planning regimes can catalyze jobs creation without sacrificing land use’s primary goal to keep communities livable and peaceful places, in the process enhancing development quality through adopting and enforcing dynamic development conventions.
{"title":"Tactical Urbanism v2: Dynamic Land Use Regulation and Partnership Tools Regenerating First Suburbs","authors":"Michael N. Widener","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2491343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2491343","url":null,"abstract":"How should land use regulators act when their communities are economically deprived? Land use regulation typically is viewed as passive; projects proceed when criteria established by ordinances are satisfied, but are delayed or scuttled when parameters of codes are unmet. Insufficient attention is directed by local governments to the economic impacts of any such events. The current employment and productivity perils of inner-ring suburbs, the lately-dismissed first ‘outskirts’ of metropolitan areas, recall the question whether expanding economic opportunity for every community citizen must dominate conversations among zoning administrations. Too many first suburbs are in decline, their citizens dismayed about their futures and helpless in some instances to act without government intervention. This paper describes how their local administrations, partnering with developers and citizens, must refocus efforts to revitalize inner-ring neighborhoods physically while growing job opportunities, in that process deploying familiar and novel land use regulation and related collaborative strategies. The paper addresses how administrators of planning regimes can catalyze jobs creation without sacrificing land use’s primary goal to keep communities livable and peaceful places, in the process enhancing development quality through adopting and enforcing dynamic development conventions.","PeriodicalId":306856,"journal":{"name":"Economic Inequality & the Law eJournal","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122311044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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