Cost Of Redistribution Research Articles

Lognormal (re)distribution: A macrofounded theory of inequality

We study how political competition over redistribution determines income inequality under one macrofounded premise: the income distribution is approximately log-normal before and after any policy intervention. The unique equilibrium features substantial income inequality and less than maximal redistribution, even if the voters’ median income is very low. Fitting our model to the US economy, we argue that either the efficiency cost of redistribution is higher than estimates in the literature, or else US’s redistributive policies are optimal for an agent richer than the median voter.

Optimal Network Reconfiguration and Power Curtailment of Renewable Energy Sources to Eliminate Overloads of Power Lines

The increasing number of renewable energy sources in power systems contributes to overloads of power lines in emergency situations. Lines made with relatively small cross-section cables, which in the past were designed for an operating temperature of 40 °C, are particularly exposed to overloads. Currently, they constitute the so-called “bottlenecks” in network capacity. This is manifested in the fact that when carrying out expert opinions aimed at examining the impact of a source on the network, computational analyses show overloads of its elements. This article proposes a methodology for eliminating these overloads. It involves the use of two methods at the same time, namely optimal network reconfiguration combined with minimisation of the total power curtailment in RE sources. The search for the optimal network configuration will also allow for minimising power curtailment in renewable energy sources, and thus reduce the costs of this type of operation. With such a tool, network operators will be able to achieve the effect of relieving the line load with the lowest possible cost of redistribution. Based on the IEEE 118 bus test network, calculations were performed that confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The operation of the proposed methodology is presented with the example of two selected network failure states. The novelty of the proposed solution lies in the simultaneous use of two methods of eliminating line overloads. This streamlines the entire process and improves its effectiveness.

Repression and growth in the periphery of Europe: The politics of changing growth regime in Turkey

This study shows that in peripheral economies that are linked into circuits of global capital on unequal terms, attempts to change the core features of an existing growth regime without broader political support intensify externally induced conflict among the ruling coalition. Under these circumstances, a transition to a new demand regime within a short time frame is more likely to take place via authoritarian intervention when the political cost of repression is lower than the cost of redistribution. In developing these points, the analysis builds on evidence from Turkey: following the 2008 global credit crunch, the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) domestic demand-led and credit-fueled growth under dependent financialization has experienced a major crisis. However, the subsequent push to replace this regime with a profit-led model with an emphasis on exports worsened the conflict among the political coalition supporting the party as their preferences over monetary policy began to diverge. A temporary resolution of this deepening rift has been possible by way of an authoritarian intervention under R. T. Erdogan’s presidential bid in 2017–18. By situating the debate on the relationship between growth regimes and political institutions, the study further unpacks the nexus between democratic backsliding, dominant social blocs, and economic growth in the periphery of Europe.

Paying for inattention

We augment the standard rational inattention model by allowing the decision maker to alter the distribution of payoffs. The model captures real-life circumstances in which decision makers choose their incentives to pay attention, for instance, through the choice of insurance (full-coverage contracts reduce the incentives to pay attention compared to partial coverage). This new framework, specifically the ability to observe the decision maker’s choice of payoff redistribution, allows us to elicit the decision maker’s targeted attention level. This is a novel method of eliciting the object of interest—attention—typically obtained through performance (i.e., repetitions) in the literature. Furthermore, by manipulating the cost of payoff redistribution, the framework allows us to examine rational inattention models without making parametric assumptions on the cost of attention function. With a laboratory experiment, we validate novel comparative static predictions of our model. The subjects respond to the link between payoff redistribution decisions and attention in accordance to the theory.

Planning of Hydrogen Refueling Stations in Urban Setting While Considering Hydrogen Redistribution

Electrified transportation systems and renewable energy resources have been recognized as effective environmental-friendly technologies against global warming contributed by greenhouse gas (GHG). Remarkably, hydrogen fuel cell-powered electric vehicles can outperform battery-powered electric vehicles largely in the sense of the driving range and the refueling time. However, both of them require a better coordination of infrastructure system and renewable energy resources to achieve a significant reduction of GHG emissions. This article aims to maximize the long-term profitability for the planning model of hydrogen refueling stations, where the capacitated flow refueling location model is leveraged for maximal traffic flow coverage. Furthermore, we discuss various real-world constraints, such as traffic network constraints, distribution network constraints, hydrogen balance constraints, and energy constraints for electric vehicles, to make the planning model more practical. By considering the uncertainty of the short-term refueling demand across the city, an approach for geographically redistributing hydrogen among the stations is also presented where the minimal cost of redistribution is modeled by one-commodity pickup-and-delivery traveling salesman problem. A real-life case study of Western Sydney is adopted to testify the efficiency of the planning model under current and future cost levels. Finally, a numerical simulation is utilized to demonstrate the validity of the hydrogen redistribution method.

Redistribution with Performance Pay

Half of the jobs in the U.S. feature pay-for-performance. We study nonlinear income taxation in a model where such labor contracts arise as a result of moral hazard frictions within firms. We derive novel formulas for the incidence of arbitrarily nonlinear reforms of a given tax code on both average earnings and their sensitivity to output risk. We show theoretically and quantitatively that, following an increase in tax progressivity, the higher sensitivity of earnings to performance caused by the crowding-out of private insurance is almost fully o�set by a countervailing performance-pay effect driven by labor supply responses. As a result, earnings risk is hardly affected by policy. We then turn to the normative analysis of a government that levies taxes and transfers to redistribute income across workers with different levels of uninsurable productivity. We�find that setting taxes without accounting for the endogeneity of private insurance is close to optimal. Thus, the common concern that standard models of taxation underestimate the cost of redistribution is, in the context of performance-based compensation, overblown.

Effect of Nb-doping and E-poling on dielectric and electric properties of NBT ceramics

ABSTRACT Low-levels of Nb-doped (≤2 at.%) NBT ceramics were synthesized using a conventional ceramic technique. The XRD analysis indicated the formation of a perovskite structure with rhombohedral symmetry where Nb-doping tends to expand the lattice. The dielectric characteristics and piezoelectric coupling are enhanced as a result of microdefect dipole and ferroelectric order disturbance. It was shown that E-poling influences the properties under investigation. This includes a decrease of electric permittivity (ϵ) and an increase of depolarization temperature Td and temperature Tm at which ϵ is the maximum. This is accompanied by the increase of tetragonal regions at the cost of rhombohedral phase (visible in the Raman spectra) and redistribution of the microdefect dipoles, hence ferroelectric order.

Improving MPI Collective I/O for High Volume Non-Contiguous Requests With Intra-Node Aggregation

Two-phase I/O is a well-known strategy for implementing collective MPI-IO functions. It redistributes I/O requests among the calling processes into a form that minimizes the file access costs. As modern parallel computers continue to grow into the exascale era, the communication cost of such request redistribution can quickly overwhelm collective I/O performance. This effect has been observed from parallel jobs that run on multiple compute nodes with a high count of MPI processes on each node. To reduce the communication cost, we present a new design for collective I/O by adding an extra communication layer that performs request aggregation among processes within the same compute nodes. This approach can significantly reduce inter-node communication congestion when redistributing the I/O requests. We evaluate the performance and compare with the original two-phase I/O on a Cray XC40 parallel computer with Intel KNL processors. Using I/O patterns from two large-scale production applications and an I/O benchmark, we show the performance improvement of up to 29 times when running 16384 MPI processes on 256 compute nodes.

Interprovincial food trade and water resources conservation in China

A spatial mismatch in water and arable land availability results in large virtual water transfers through interprovincial food trade in China. Accurately identifying and measuring water-saving links in interprovincial food trade can help to relieve water resources pressure in main grain-producing areas. We use a multiregional input-output table combined with the CROPWAT model to build China's interprovincial virtual water transfer network embedded in food trade in 2012. Then, water saving and scarce water saving are measured. Both consider the difference in water productivity among provinces, but the latter also pays attention to the scarcity of water resources. Finally, we adopt a water footprint to recalculate the scarce water savings without precipitation (green water). Our results indicate that the amount of virtual water transfer embedded in food trade is 74.9 billion m3, which is equivalent to 12.22% of the total water use in 2012. We observe large variations in the relationship between water resources abundance and agricultural water-use efficiency across provinces. Especially, there is a virtual water transfer from provinces with high water productivity but a lack of water to provinces with low water productivity but an abundance of water. The scarce water saving can identify sustainable food trade links, which can alleviate water scarcity in consuming provinces without exacerbating water shortage in producing provinces. In addition, interprovincial food trade results in 15 billion m3 of scarce gray water saving, which is equivalent to 59.76% of the scarce blue water saving. Scarce water saving based on blue water and gray water provides a basis for establishing an interprovincial compensation mechanism to balance the cost of water redistribution caused by food trade.

Redistribution with Performance Pay

Half of the jobs in the U.S. feature pay-for-performance. We study nonlinear income taxation in a model where such contracts arise in private labor markets that are constrained by moral hazard frictions. We derive novel formulas for the incidence of arbitrarily nonlinear reforms of any given tax code on both the mean of earnings and their sensitivity to performance. We show theoretically and quantitatively that, following an increase in tax progressivity, the higher performance-sensitivity caused by the crowding-out of insurance provided by firms is almost fully offset by a countervailing “performance-pay effect” driven by labor supply responses. As a result, earnings risk is hardly affected by policy. We then turn to the normative analysis of a government that levies taxes and transfers to redistribute income across workers with different levels of uninsurable productivity. We find that setting taxes without accounting for the endogeneity of private insurance is close to optimal. Thus, the common concern that standard models of taxation underestimate the cost of redistribution is, in the context of performance-based compensation, overblown.

Land Use and Redistribution in the Arid West: The case of Laingsburg Magisterial District

ABSTRACTData collected during a multi-year study of farming in the district is updated to compile a land register. It identifies 30% of farmland by farm size and type and provides estimates of financial performance in each class. Three redistribution scenarios are considered – proportional redistribution, targeting large bona fide operations and targeting lifestyle land. The basic premise is still willing buyer willing seller. Changing the acquisition rules hardly affects the number of beneficiaries or the cost of redistribution but demonstrates that it is important not to overpay for lifestyle land. A redistribution plan for smallholder and settlement-orientated land users is added to the commercial plan according to Aliber's ratios. Commercial redistribution will involve 33 farms with a combined area of 2113 km2 at a total cost of between R352–384 million (using 2015 prices) and will include scope to provide for 132 commonage farmers and 660 settlement-orientated land users. Two-thirds of the land involved was for sale in January 2019 or could be enticed onto the market relatively easily because it has a low opportunity cost in agriculture and the plan would reach as many beneficiaries as there were indigent households in the district in 2017.

Environmental justice and flood prevention: The moral cost of floodwater redistribution

Flood prevention is a predominant practice in flood hazard mitigation. Governments around the world have been striving to protect important urban centers from flooding at all cost. Often carried out through flood control infrastructure and commonly perceived as a technical exercise, flood prevention can however lead to environmental injustice. This is because flood prevention measures do not eliminate but only redistribute floodwater; they often impose new flood risks on people elsewhere or precipitate flooding in another place that would bring about the displacement of an entire community. As governments around the world have come to prioritize economic and political centers for flood protection, the costs of flood prevention are often disproportionately borne by communities that are already vulnerable, disadvantaged, and marginalized—resulting in gross injustice. However, the environmental injustice precipitated by flood prevention through the inequitable process of floodwater redistribution has yet to be systematically examined. We illustrate the problem through the case of the Taipei Area Flood Control Plan, which have unjustly harmed two marginalized communities of Zhouho and Shezidao. Because flood prevention measures are likely to be more intensively implemented in the face of increasingly extreme storms against the backdrop of accelerating urbanization, the moral cost of flood prevention requires greater attention. To address this environmental injustice, we argue for a paradigm shift towards flood adaptation in flood hazard mitigation.

Income hiding and informal redistribution: A lab-in-the-field experiment in Senegal

We estimate the hidden cost of social obligations to redistribute exploiting data from a controlled setting in urban Senegal, which combines lab-in-the-field measures and out-of-lab follow-up data. We estimate a social tax of about 9 percent. When given the opportunity to get hidden income, individuals decrease by 26 percent the share of gains they transfer to kin — mostly outside the household — and increase health and personal expenses. We expand on prior literature by both identifying the individual cost of informal redistribution and then relating it to postexperiment resource-allocation decisions, and by disentangling intra- and interhousehold redistributive pressure.

The Public Debt Crisis of the United States

Since the birth of the Republic, the United States has gone through five debt‐crisis episodes defined as year‐on‐year increases in net federal debt in the 95‐percentile. The Great Recession is the second largest, and the only one in which primary deficits continue six years later and are expected to persist at least through 2026. Persistent deficits are also sharply at odds with the surpluses that contributed to the reversal of all major debt surges in U.S. history. There is a view that high debt is not a concern and more debt is needed for fiscal stimulus and/or strong global demand for ‘safe assets’. This paper makes four points to the contrary based on findings from the literature: First, empirical work shows that debt sustainability conditions display a significant break after 2008 and fiscal stimulus fails when debt is high. Second, a dynamic general equilibrium model predicts that tax adjustments may not make the debt sustainable and will have adverse effects on macro aggregates and social welfare. Third, the strong appetite for U.S. public debt worldwide can be a slow‐moving, transitory result from financial globalization in an environment in which U.S. financial markets are relatively more developed and the expected financing needs of the U.S. government are large. Fourth, domestic sovereign default could become optimal if the cost of regressive redistribution in order to make debt payments outweighs default costs related to the social value of debt for liquidity provision, self‐insurance and risk‐sharing.

A “Swedish” actuarial balance for a notional defined contribution pension scheme with disability and minimum pension benefits

AbstractThis article proposes a “Swedish” type actuarial balance sheet (ABS) for a notional defined contribution (NDC) scheme with disability and minimum pension benefits. The proposed ABS splits the pension system in two parts: the pure NDC part and the redistributive part, which includes the assets and liabilities originating from non‐contributory rights. The article contains a numerical example that sheds light on the real applicability of our proposal. The model has practical implications that could be of interest to policy‐makers, given that it integrates actuarial and social aspects of public pensions and discloses the real cost of redistribution through minimum pensions.

Cutthroat Capitalism versus Cuddly Socialism: Are Americans More Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking than Scandinavians?

There is a striking difference in income inequality and redistributive policies between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there is a corresponding cross-country difference in social preferences, we conducted the first large-scale international social preference experiment, with nationally representative samples from the United States and Norway. We introduce a new experimental approach, which combines the infrastructure of an international online market place and the infrastructure of a leading international data collection agency. A novel feature of our experiment is that Americans and Norwegians make real distributive choices in identical situations where they have complete information about the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution. We show that Americans and Norwegians differ significantly in fairness views, but not in the importance assigned to efficiency. The study also provides robust causal evidence of fairness considerations being much more fundamental for inequality acceptance than efficiency considerations in both countries.

Cutthroat Capitalism Versus Cuddly Socialism: Are Americans More Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking than Scandinavians?

There is a striking difference in income inequality and redistributive policies between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there is a corresponding cross-country difference in social preferences, we conducted the first large-scale international social preference experiment, with nationally representative samples from the United States and Norway. We introduce a new experimental approach, which combines the infrastructure of an international online market place and the infrastructure of a leading international data collection agency. A novel feature of our experiment is that Americans and Norwegians make real distributive choices in identical situations where they have complete information about the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution. We show that Americans and Norwegians differ significantly in fairness views, but not in the importance assigned to efficiency. The study also provides robust causal evidence of fairness considerations being much more fundamental for inequality acceptance than efficiency considerations in both countries.

A 'Swedish' Actuarial Balance Sheet for a Notional Defined Contribution Pension Scheme with Disability and Retirement Benefits

This paper proposes a “Swedish” type actuarial balance sheet for a notional defined contribution scheme embedding disability insurance within the retirement pension system. The underlying framework supporting the actuarial balance relies on a multistate overlapping generations model that includes the so-called survivor dividend and a minimum pension benefit for both contingencies. The proposed ABS splits the system into two parts: the actuarial part (pure NDC) and the redistributive part, which includes the assets and liabilities originating from non-contributory rights. The paper also contains a numerical example that sheds light on the real applicability of our proposal and confirms that the model works reasonably well. The results obtained make sense and provide us with some useful values regarding the impact of introducing a minimum pension on the system's financial equilibrium. The model has practical implications that could be of interest to policy makers, given that it integrates actuarial and social aspects of public pensions and discloses the real cost of redistribution through minimum pensions.

An upper bound on the second order asymptotic expansion for the quantum communication cost of state redistribution

State redistribution is the protocol in which given an arbitrary tripartite quantum state, with two of the subsystems initially being with Alice and one being with Bob, the goal is for Alice to send one of her subsystems to Bob, possibly with the help of prior shared entanglement. We derive an upper bound on the second order asymptotic expansion for the quantum communication cost of achieving state redistribution with a given finite accuracy. In proving our result, we also obtain an upper bound on the quantum communication cost of this protocol in the one-shot setting, by using the protocol of coherent state merging as a primitive.

Assessing the cost of redistribution followed by a computational kernel: Complexity and performance results

Algorithms for finding the optimal distribution compatible with a given data partition.Analysis of the algorithms for different cost metrics.NP-completeness proof for the redistribution problem followed by a computational kernel.Experimental results for the 1D-stencil kernel and the QR factorization algorithm. The classical redistribution problem aims at optimally scheduling communications when reshuffling from an initial data distribution to a target data distribution. This target data distribution is usually chosen to optimize some objective for the algorithmic kernel under study (good computational balance or low communication volume or cost), and therefore to provide high efficiency for that kernel. However, the choice of a distribution minimizing the target objective is not unique. This leads to generalizing the redistribution problem as follows: find a re-mapping of data items onto processors such that the data redistribution cost is minimal, and the operation remains as efficient. This paper studies the complexity of this generalized problem. We compute optimal solutions and evaluate, through simulations, their gain over classical redistribution. We also show the NP-hardness of the problem to find the optimal data partition and processor permutation (defined by new subsets) that minimize the cost of redistribution followed by a simple computational kernel. Finally, experimental validation of the new redistribution algorithms are conducted on a multicore cluster, for both a 1D-stencil kernel and a more compute-intensive dense linear algebra routine.