Individual Endowments Research Articles

Identification in general equilibrium

This survey covers the developments in the theory of the recoverability of unobserved fundamentals from observable variables in general equilibrium models. Concretely, suppose one observes equilibrium prices that vary with the profiles of individual endowments. What inferences can be made about individuals’ preferences? What are the local restrictions on the map, from profiles of endowments to prices? Suppose one only has finitely many observations. What inferences about individuals’ preferences can be made as the number of observations becomes large?

Wages and Creativity. A Case Study of a Municipal Company in Poland

The aim of the study is to diagnose the relationship between wages and creativity. The study uses the case of a municipal company in Poland, where we measured creativity at each job position. In this way, the research focuses on the creativity of a workplace rather than individual endowments of creativity, such as employees' cognitive and noncognitive skills. The paper confirms that creativity explains wages and their dynamics. It also indicates that both the number of jobs with creative tasks and the disparity in wages within the company increased. Workers engaged in more creative labor were typically paid more than those who performed routine jobs. The study has also found that employees with higher creativity rank enjoyed the greatest increase in wages between 2009 and 2020.

Competing with Media Richness: Cognitive and Psychological Endowment Effects as the Fundamentally Pervasive Perspective of Learning Performance

This study investigates the students’ behaviour, especially regarding their cognitive and psychological endowments’ effect on their cognitive absorption, attachment comprehensivity, and learning achievement through various types of learning media. Specifically, it highlights that the resulting learning performance fundamentally starts from individual endowment positions, regardless of the available types of learning media. The authors find that the cognitive and psychological endowments’ functional superiority dominates the learning achievement compared to the MR role types. Furthermore, we demonstrate that individuals’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour are superior to their cognitive and psychological endowments because motivation, inner spirit, and faithfulness in appropriation defeat their material knowledge acquisition in their learning processes, such as absorption, achievement, and attachment. This research presents its novelty through learning attachment behaviour due to supremely personal psychological and cognitive endowment effects. Furthermore, the students with the highest negative experiences impact low absorption, comprehensive attachment, and learning achievement. Finally, the authors reveal that individually endowed mindsets and attitudes contribute to higher learning performance than the MR role types. Thus, it demonstrates that the MR role types produce a low incremental performance, which is nothing more than maximising valuable information.

Effectiveness of Information Acquisition via the Internet in Standardizing the Use of Antimicrobials by Hog Farmers: Insights from China

Antimicrobial residues and resistance caused by farmers’ overuse of veterinary antimicrobials have seriously threatened food safety, the ecological environment, and public health. With the popularization of the Internet in rural areas, especially in developing countries, the constraints of obtaining agricultural technical information provided by governments or organizations are greatly eased, farmers’ knowledge and skills are significantly improved, and the agricultural standardized production system is effectively constructed. However, there is still a research gap on whether information acquisition via the Internet (IAI) can induce farmers to standardize the use of antimicrobials. Using the data of 675 hog farmers in the Hebei, Shandong, Henan, and Hubei provinces, China, the IV-Heckman and mediating effect models were used to analyze the phenomenon empirically. The main findings revealed that the IAI had exerted a significant influence on the standardized use of veterinary antimicrobials by hog farmers, i.e., the IAI not only helped farmers to decide to standardize the use of antimicrobials but also reduced the amount of investment in the standardized use of antibiotics. Moreover, information-sharing and feedback mechanisms partially mediated the relationship between the IAI and farmers’ standardized use of antimicrobials. Finally, considering the heterogeneity of individual endowments, the study further revealed that the IAI significantly impacted the standardized use of antimicrobials for farmers below the age of 36 years. However, the IAI was found to positively and significantly promote farmers’ standardized-use decisions only if they had less than five years of breeding time.

Balanced equilibrium in pseudo-markets with endowments

In a variant of Hylland and Zeckhauser (1979)'s model that allows agents to start out with different endowments, we develop a pseudo-market procedure that allows the policymaker to decide to what extent individual endowment differences shall be balanced by the average endowment. Our procedure sidesteps the known non-existence problem of Walrasian equilibria, and finds an efficient and balanced individually-rational allocation. Envy in our procedure is justified in a utilitarian sense: an envying agent's endowment must make a lower contribution to standard weighted utilitarian welfare than that of the envied agent.

Unintended consequences: How does digital inclusive finance affect migrants' urban settlement intentions?

Existing studies focus more on the benefits of digital inclusive finance in promoting employment, raising people's income, and boosting consumption, but have relatively ignore the widespread existence of the digital divide between urban and rural areas and among different groups in China and the unintended consequences it produces. This study first adds learning costs to the traditional population migration theoretical framework, confirming that the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban settlement intention of the migrants has an inverted U-shape, as the level of digital inclusion financial development increases, the intentions of the migrants to settle down first rises and then falls. Empirical results support this finding. A further investigation shows that the economic dividends and learning cost associated with digital inclusive finance underpins such an inverted-U relationship. Moreover, individual endowment is an important factor affecting learning cost. The negative effect of digital inclusive finance on urban settlement intention is more obvious for rural migrants with relatively inferior endowment. Finally, we also find that education can mitigate this negative effect by reducing the related learning costs. This study provides strong evidence that in the rapid development of digital inclusive finance, migrants, especially those with insufficient endowments face greater migration costs.

“From the Capital, Forever Donated by Him...”

The article is devoted to the problem which is insufficiently studied – the formation and spread of the practice of making endowments as a form of charitable donations based on the example of the activities carried out by Siberian merchants of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The purpose of the study is to provide a holistic overview of the activities of these merchants in the considered region. As a result of the study, about forty cases of the collective and individual endowments of Siberian merchants as well as their names and the size of their contributions have been identified based on the scientific and reference books, literature and archival sources. Moreover, the spheres, for which such donations were sent, have been analyzed. The connection between the development of the institute of endowments and the peculiarities of the credit and financial system of the region has been pinpointed. The results have also shown that the first endowments in the region appeared in the 1830s, but became more widely spread in the post-reform period. Most of such contributions were meant to support public education, the poor and medical institutions. Furthermore, one part of these target capitals was directed to support scientific research, orthodox churches and urban improvement. Special attention is paid to the history of creation and functioning of the Irkutsk orphanage house of E. M. Medvednikova. It is concluded that the practice of making endowments reflected the worldview of merchants and public moods. The article is intended both for historians as well as the widest circle of readers.

Inequality and fairness with heterogeneous endowments.

People differ in intelligence, cognitive ability, personality traits, motivation, and similar valued and, to a large degree, inherited characteristics that determine success and achievements. When does individual heterogeneity lead to a fair distribution of rewards and outcomes? Here, we develop this question theoretically and then test it experimentally for a set of structural conditions in a specific interaction situation. We first catalogue the functional relationship between individual endowments and outcomes to distinguish between fairness concepts such as meritocracy, equality of opportunity, equality of outcomes, and Rawl's theory of justice. We then use an online experiment to study which of these fairness patterns emerge when differently endowed individuals can share their resources with others, depending on whether information about others' endowments and outcomes is available. We find that while visible outcomes lessen inequality by decreasing the statistical dispersion of outcomes across the group, endowments need to be visible for better equality of opportunity for the most disadvantaged.

Representative endowments and uniform Gini orderings of multi-attribute welfare

For the comparison of inequality and welfare in multiple attributes the use of generalized Gini indices is proposed. Individual endowment vectors are summarized by using attribute weights and aggregated in a spectral social evaluation function. Such functions are based on classes of spectral functions, ordered by their aversion to inequality. Given a spectrum and a set P of attribute weights, a multivariate Gini dominance ordering, being uniform in weights, is defined. If the endowment vectors are comonotonic, the dominance is determined by their marginal distributions; if not, the dependence structure of the endowment distribution has to be taken into account. For this, a set-valued representative endowment is introduced that characterizes the welfare of a d-dimensioned distribution. It consists of all points above the lower border of a convex compact in mathbb {R}^{d}, while the set ordering of representative endowments corresponds to uniform Gini dominance. An application is given to the welfare of 28 European countries. Properties of P-uniform Gini dominance are derived, including relations to other orderings of d-variate distributions such as convex and dependence orderings. The multi-dimensioned representative endowment can be efficiently calculated from data. In a sampling context, it consistently estimates its population version.

Is the discrimination against migrant workers tending toward zero in urban China?

AbstractThe paper analyzes earnings differences between rural–urban migrants and urban workers in China to examine the proposition that discrimination against migrant workers is tending toward zero. Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition is applied using the 2013 China Household Income Project (CHIP) database to find out the extent of discrimination against migrant workers. The results show the existence of wage difference between the two groups, however, most of the wage difference can be explained by observable characteristics implying that discrimination is on the wane. Assuming the urban worker's wage as a nondiscriminatory wage, the benchmark model shows that 82.9% of the wage difference can be explained by individual endowments. Furthermore, including occupation and industry variables the extended model can explain 91.8% leaving only 8.2% as the source of wage discrimination. Using the combined and Cotton (1988) method, the explanatory part is still very high (89.2% and 86.3%) although a bit lower than the previous method. To further support the proposition, we also do the same exercise using 2007 CHIP data that shows a higher percentage of discrimination (36.2%), implying that discrimination decreased in 2013 compared to 2007. A cautious review of similar literature also supports the view. In short, wage discrimination against migrant workers is tending toward zero in recent urban China.

Research on the Individual Income Tax-Deferred Commercial Endowment Insurance from the Perspective of Fairness

In order to alleviate the pressure of the basic endowment insurance system, China has implemented the policy of individual income tax-deferred commercial endowment insurance (IITDCEI) and actively explored the development path of individual supplementary endowment insurance. At present, the same tax rules are adopted for different income groups. Considering that people's income gap is large, different income groups enjoy different degrees of tax preference under this policy, which may cause social injustice and increase the gap between the rich and the poor. Based on this, we propose a new optimization scheme by adjusting the tax rate and the maximum premium limit of the insurance amount so as to coordinate the interests of low-, medium-, and high-income subjects and balance the degree of tax preference among the three subjects. At the same time, we also change the two parameters of the predetermined interest rate and retirement age, and compare the changes of the tax preference under the old and new schemes, and provide corresponding countermeasures for the implementation of the IITDCEI policy.

Income Differences between Flexibly and Nonflexibly Employed Persons and Their Deconstruction: An Analysis Based on Data from the 2018 China Mobility Monitor

The article analyzed the income differences between flexibly and nonflexibly employed persons based on the 2018 China Mobile Population Dynamics Monitoring Data, using OLS methods, propensity score matching (PSM), and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The results show that the income of flexibly employed persons is 11.9%–23.6% higher than that of nonflexibly employed persons, with differences in individual endowment characteristics explaining 53.9% of the income difference and differences in coefficients of nonmarket factors explaining 45.7% of the income difference. The degree of income difference between the two groups in different industries varies; except for the primary industry, the secondary and tertiary industries all show higher income for flexibly employed persons than for nonflexibly employed persons. The difference in income between the two groups was as high as 25% or more in the sectors of “rental and business services,” “education,” and “culture, sports, and entertainment.” The high ratio of employers and self-employed workers in flexible employment and the fact that the average number of hours worked per week is 12.6 hours higher for flexible workers than for nonflexible workers are important factors contributing to the difference in earnings between these two groups. Clarifying the extent of the current income disparity between flexible and nonflexible employment groups and its sources, and formulating and adjusting relevant policies and measures in a timely manner are conducive to creating a fair and equitable labour market environment and promoting the healthy development of flexible employment under the new circumstances.

Effects of Personal Ability and Social Welfare on the Health of Rural-to-Urban Elderly Migrants: An Empirical Analysis from Jiangsu Province, China.

This study aims to discuss the relationship between personal endowment and social welfare on the health status of the rural-to-urban elderly migrants. It constructed the theoretical framework of the health vulnerability of rural-to-urban elderly migrants. The health status of rural-to-urban elderly migrants was divided into three dimensions: physical health, mental health, and social adaptation. A total of 658 rural-to-urban elderly migrants in 12 cities of Jiangsu province were selected as samples for empirical test and analyzed the influence of individual endowments and social welfare on the health status of rural-to-urban elderly migrants and their differences. The result shows that personal ability affects the social adaptation ability of rural-to-urban elderly migrants, and social welfare has a significant influence on the physical and mental health of rural-to-urban elderly migrants. Lacking the learning ability of rural-to-urban elderly migrants in sample areas is the main factor that leads to their low social adaptation ability and the unequal social welfare and public services restricting the physiological and mental health status of rural-to-urban elderly migrants.

Effects of Inequality on Trust and Reciprocity: An Experiment With Real Effort.

The purpose of this paper is analyzing whether trust and reciprocity are affected by how rich the partner is or how well the partner performed several tasks with real effort. A trust game (TG) experiment is designed with three treatments. First, a baseline Treatment B in which subjects play a finitely repeated TG. Second, in a Treatment H with history, subjects know the partner’s wealth level reached in the past. Third, in a Treatment E with effort the individual endowment with which the TG is played is endogenous and results from the subject’s performance in three different real effort tasks (maths, cognitive and general knowledge related). The data analysis highlights the importance of past wealth levels (Treatment H) as well as endowment heterogeneity (Treatment E), on the actual levels of trust and reciprocity. Specifically, it is observed that the decision of trustors is positively affected by positive past experienced reciprocity. Moreover, trustors are sensitive to how much money the trustee accumulates each round in Treatment H, trusting more the ones that have accumulated less compared to themselves. In contrast with that, it is remarkable in Treatment E that trustors are sensitive to the endowment level of the trustees, trusting more the partners that have got a higher than own endowment, probably considering that a person that performed better in the tasks is a better partner to trust. As far as second players’ behavior, as the amount received from the trustor increases it is less likely that the trustee reciprocates with higher than or with the egalitarian amount. In Treatments H and E, the probability that the trustee reciprocates with higher amount that the one received increases when inequality in endowment/accumulated earnings favors the trustor. Additional results come from analysis of personality archetypes and socio-demographic variables.

Fair reallocation in economies with single-peaked preferences

We consider the problem of fairly reallocating the individual endowments of a perfectly divisible good among agents with single-peaked preferences. As agents may have different individual endowments in this problem, the standard concept of envy-freeness cannot be applied directly. Thus, we propose a new concept of fairness, which we call envy-freeness for similarities. It requires that each agent whose best amount is strictly greater (less) than his individual endowment should not envy another agent whose best amount and assignment are strictly greater (less) than her individual endowment. We then construct a rule satisfying envy-freeness for similarities and some other desirable properties. In doing so, we propose a new extension of the well-known uniform rule for the reallocation problem, which we call the gross uniform reallocation rule. Moreover, we show that the gross uniform reallocation rule is the only rule that satisfies efficiency, individual rationality, strategy-proofness, and envy-freeness for similarities.

Editor’s Letter

1. Brian Bruce 1. Editor-in-Chief <!-- --> 1. To order reprints of this article, please contact David Rowe at d.rowe{at}pageantmedia.com or 646-891-2157. To open this issue, Ennis presents an analysis of the performance of 43 of the largest individual endowments over the past 11 years

Wage Discrimination within Health care Professions: An Intersectional Analysis

Research ObjectiveThe goal of this project was to analyze the degree to which gender discrimination and black‐white racial wage discrimination exist within the US health care workforce. Additionally, this project utilizes a critical race theoretical framework to explore how individuals with intersectional identities, specifically black women, are impacted by these wage differences.Study DesignOur project uses the 2010‐2018 pooled samples of the American Community Survey, a household survey conducted by the US Census Bureau and extracted using the Integrated Public Use Microdata (IPUMS) data tool. This study uses Blinder‐Oaxaca wage decomposition to analyze gender and race wage differentials. To analyze wage differentials, we used the Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition method. To capture intersectionality, we conduct a series of specific decompositions to capture the reality of black women within the health care workforce. First, we ran a decomposition analysis to identify and quantify the degree to which individual endowments contribute to gender wage differentials at each earning level. Next, we ran a similar analysis to identify the cause of racial wage differentials. Next, we ran two analyses that compared (1) white men and black women and (2) black men with white women. Each decomposition took into account wage differences at each earning level. A series of robustness checks were also conducted to check the validity of our decomposition results.Population StudiedThis sample of over 1.5 million individuals includes all individuals who reported being employed within the health care industry. This sample excludes managers and those in administrative position but does include individuals from a broad range of earning levels and includes technicians as well as specialists and surgeons.Principal FindingsGender and racial wage differences do exist within the health care workforce. Our results show that only 67% of the differences in wages between white men and black women can be attributed to skill‐based differences. This finding suggests that 33% of this difference is unexplained and may be attributable to wage discrimination. However, we find that compared to white women, black men may be experiencing some forms of positive discrimination as skill‐based differences fail to account for the observed wage differentials. Overall, we see that black women have the lowest wages at all earning levels within our sample.ConclusionsThe analytic findings of this study confirm existing racial and gender wage disparities within the health care workforce. Our intersectional analyses suggest that black women are uniquely disadvantaged within the health care workforce. In order to achieve critical racism theoretical practice, it is important for the health care industry to not replicate the system disadvantage that people of color, and specifically black women experience in other aspects of our society.Implications for Policy or PracticeDiversifying the health care workforce is a stated priority for AHRQ and a necessary step in providing adequate care for our increasingly diverse patient populations. Attracting a retaining a diverse workforce requires the elimination of both gender and racial wage discrimination.Primary Funding SourceUniversity of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Predoctoral Fellowship.

Beauty premium in China's labor market: Is discrimination the main reason?

Based on data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this paper analyzes the effects of the height as well as other appearance characteristics of workers on their wages. Regression results show that after controlling for social network, human capital, and other endowment characteristics, the effects of the appearance characteristics become smaller and statistically insignificant. The decomposition results of the wage-appearance differentials show that higher wages for good-looking workers are mainly attributable to differences in individual characteristics. Among them, the lower wages for shorter males and higher wages for thinner females are mainly attributable to the unexplained parts of discrimination. Males suffer more from “shortness penalty”, whereas females may earn from “pretty face”. Further results showed that height may influence blue-collar workers’ wages through the effect on physical strength. Empirical evidence also demonstrates that there are strong correlations between appearance and working ability (social network and human capital). Thus, our results confirmed the little beauty premium in the Chinese labor market and the relatively wages differentials are not mainly due to discrimination from consumers or employers, instead attributable mainly to differences of individual endowment characteristics.

Collaborative problem-solving and citizenship education: a philosophical escape in the age of competencies

Starting from the Italian results of the PISA 2015 surveys as regards the competence of young students in collaborative problem-solving, in this paper we conduct a critical analysis of the concept of competence, as seen through the lens of the Capability Approach. The Philosophy for Children curriculum is presented as a pedagogical and didactic proposal capable of re-conceptualizing the constructs of ‘problem-solving’ and ‘collaboration’. In the light of ‘Complex Thinking’ theory and the ‘community of inquiry’ classroom methodology, the general theoretical frame of the PISA and DeSeCo approach to problem-solving has been criticized for its focus on what has been defined in terms of “internal mental structures in the sense of abilities, dispositions or resources embedded in the individual”. The proposal of Philosophy for Children and its ‘community of inquiry’ methodology are considered and discussed. This educational curriculum provides a real opportunity to rethink citizenship education by concentrating on the value and power of collective agency and the ability to wonder about our world. The pedagogical implications are significant because this means that we should be aiming to align academic education not with what society is, but with what it could or should be. To achieve this, education policies and planning actions need to focus on values and principles, on matters such as freedom, social equity and participation. These matters are not exclusive to the realms of individual endowment and performance. They have fundamental ethical and cultural components. Philosophy for Children can be considered as an opportunity to work towards the educational and political goal of creating “flourishing communities”.

Addressing the problem of mass poverty in the Sub-Saharan Africa: Conversational thinking as a tool for inclusive development

I argue that one way in which a problem such as mass poverty in the sub-Saharan Africa can be addressed is through inclusive development, which is a pro poor, pro all, programme. However, it appears that the theoretical framework that can deliver the values of inclusive development has yet to be clearly sorted out. This is because, while bringing together all actors and factors, inclusive development should not subsume individual endowments to collective values. I fault Amartya Sen’s Capabilities approach which mounts a defence of development through democratic deliberation as treating the individual in a way that seemingly trivialises the sort of relationship—a complementary one— required for inclusive development to happen, and Thaddeus Metz’s ubuntu approach which though upholds individual endowments, tends to also appeal to the collective in a way that appears to place premium on some collective values like solidarity which, I think, can blur the line between individual endowments and collective values. So, I claim that inclusive development can better be delivered using the approach of conversational thinking which has the capacity to drive the values of inclusive development such as complementarity and comprehensiveness while at the same time sufficiently isolating the endowments of the individuals from the trappings of the collective. Conversational thinking achieves this by taking the nature of the relationships of the relevant variables to factor into the effort aimed at combating social protection problems such as poverty.Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa, Inclusive development, Conversational thinking, Mass poverty, African philosophy.