Nicolas Herault

Trade Liberalisation, Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: A Computable General Equilibrium-Microsimulation Analysis

This paper studies the effects of trade liberalisation on poverty and income inequality in South Africa. The main issue of interest is the effect of international trade on households (especially their income). The approach presented in this paper relies on combining a macro-orientated computable general equilibrium model with a microsimulation model. The main concern regarding poor households is whether the decrease in nominal earnings for formal low-skilled and skilled workers is offset by the upward trend in formal employment levels. The analysis indicates that such a trade-off occurs, implying a decrease in poverty due to trade liberalisation.

A Journey Home: What Drives How Long People are Homeless?

This paper uses survival analysis to model exits over time from two alternative notions of homelessness. We are unique in being able to account for time-invariant, unobserved heterogeneity. We find that duration dependence has an inverted U-shape with exit rates initially increasing (indicating positive duration dependence) and then falling. Like previous researchers, we find results consistent with negative duration dependence in models which ignore unobserved heterogeneity. Exit rates out of homelessness fall with age and with the education level of mothers. Women are more likely than men to exit homelessness when it is broadly conceived, but appear to be less likely to exit when it is narrowly defined. Finally, higher paternal education and exemptions from welfare-related activity requirements due to either mental or physical health conditions are all associated with higher exit rates.

Agricultural distortions, poverty, and inequality in South Africa

South Africa has rapidly reduced trade barriers since the end of Apartheid, yet agricultural production and exports have remained sluggish. Also, poverty and unemployment have risen and become increasingly concentrated in rural areas. This paper examines the extent to which remaining price distortions, both domestic and foreign, are contributing to the underperformance of the agricultural sector vis-à-vis the rest of the economy. We draw on a computable general equilibrium (CGE) and micro-simulation model of South Africa that are linked to the results of a global trade model. This framework is used to examine the effects of eliminating global and domestic price distortions. Model results indicate that South Africa’s agricultural sector currently benefits from global price distortions, and that removing these would create more jobs for lower-skilled workers, thereby reducing income inequality and poverty. We also find that South Africa’s own policies are biased against agriculture and that removing domestic distortions would raise agricultural production. Job losses in nonagricultural sectors would be outweighed by job creation in agriculture, such that overall employment rises and poverty falls. Overall, our findings suggest that South Africa’s own policies are more damaging to its welfare, poverty and inequality than distortionary policies in the rest of the world. Existing national price distortions may thus explain some of the poor performance of South Africa’s agricultural sector and rural development. JEL codes: D30, D58, D63, F13, O53, Q18

Understanding Changes in the Distribution and Redistribution of Income: A Unifying Decomposition Framework

In recent decades income inequality has increased in many developed countries but the role of tax and transfer reforms is often poorly understood. We propose a new method allowing for the decomposition of historical changes in income distribution and redistribution measures into: (i) the immediate effect of tax-transfer policy reforms in the absence of behavioral responses; (ii) the effect of labor supply responses induced by these reforms; and (iii) a third component allowing us to explore the effect of changes in the distribution of a wide range of determinants, including the effect of employment changes not induced by policy reforms. The application of the decomposition to Australia reveals that the direct effect of tax-transfer policy reforms accounts for half of the observed increase in income inequality between 1999 and 2008, while the increased dispersion of wages and capital incomes also played an important role.

Returns to education: accounting for enrolment and completion effects

This paper contributes to the literature by separately analysing the course enrolment and completion effects of vocational education and training (VET) as well as higher education. Moreover, we investigate the persistence of these wage effects over time while controlling for two potential selection biases. We take advantage of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth, which contains comprehensive information about completed and uncompleted courses and subsequent labour market outcomes. We find evidence of positive enrolment and completion effects for VET and university courses with important differences by type of course.

Decomposing Inequality Changes: Allowing for Leisure in the Evaluation of Tax and Transfer Policy Effects

In this paper, we present two alternative methods of accounting for changes in leisure time in decomposing the inequality effects of tax and transfer policy changes. Three components are identified: tax policy, labour supply responses to tax policy changes and other population effects. The methods are used to decompose inequality changes in Australia between 2001 and 2006. Inequality is first defined in non-welfarist terms as a function of disposable income: the independent judge places no value on leisure. Then, this is modified to allow for evaluations using a weighted geometric mean of disposable income and leisure. This is seen to modify the evaluation of changes in important ways. The results are found to differ from those obtained using a ‘welfarist’ evaluation in terms of money metric utility, where separate labour supply effects cannot be isolated.

Sheepskin Effects in the Returns to Education: Accounting for Enrolment and Completion Effects

This paper contributes to the literature by separately analysing the signalling (or sheepskin) effects of the enrolment in and the completion of vocational education and training as well as higher education. Moreover, we investigate the persistence of these sheepskin effects over time. We take advantage of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth, which contains comprehensive information about completed and uncompleted courses and subsequent labour market outcomes. We find that signalling effects form a substantial part of the total return to education but that they vary by type of course. In addition, we show that both course attendance and course completion contribute to the overall signalling effects.

Recent Trends in Income Redistribution in Australia: Can Changes in the Tax‐Benefit System Account for the Decline in Redistribution?

We examine trends in the redistributive impact of the tax-transfer system in Australia between 1994 and 2009 using a framework that allows us to separate the contributions of taxes and benefits to overall income redistribution. Furthermore, we identify the effect of tax-transfer policy reforms on changes in income redistribution over the period by controlling for changes in the distribution of market incomes. We find that after reaching a peak value in the late 1990s, the redistributive impact of taxes and transfers steadily declined. Although reforms to the tax-transfer system contributed to the decline in redistribution, their contribution was limited.

Dynamics of Household Joblessness: Evidence from Australian Micro-Data 2001-2007

This paper investigates the persistence over time of living in a jobless household, aiming to disentangle the roles of state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity. In addition, the potential heterogeneity of state dependence is examined through estimation of interaction terms with the lagged household joblessness variable. Finally, the robustness of results is explored through the use of alternative definitions of household joblessness each based on different variables available in our data. Using the two definitions that are most different, we find substantial state dependence which is larger for women than for men under both definitions. That is, being in a jobless household in the previous year increases the probability of currently living in a jobless household by 7.7 to 17.2 percentage points for men and 12.7 to 25.1 percentage points for women. Although state dependence clearly is an important factor, as are a number of observed characteristics, unobserved heterogeneity also plays an importantrole for men and women: 32 to 40 per cent of the unexplained variance can be attributed to unobserved heterogeneity for men, and for women this is 42 to 46 per cent. A few characteristics (age, disability, student status, living outside of major cities, having a university degree, presence of preschool children) seem to affect the level of state dependence to some extent. However, aside from the age effect, which can increase state dependence by up to 50 per cent for men aged 60 to 64, the level of state dependence seems fairly homogenous amongst men and amongst women.

Understanding Changes in Progressivity and Redistributive Effects: The Role of Tax-Transfer Policies and Labour Supply Decisions

In this paper we propose a framework to study changes in the redistributive consequences of income taxes and transfers. In contrast with previous approaches the new method allows decomposition of the change in the redistributive impact into four components: the immediate effect of changes in the tax-transfer system in the absence of labour supply responses; the effect of labour supply changes induced by changes in the tax-transfer system; the effect of all other labour supply changes; and a residual capturing the variation not explained by the previous factors. We illustrate the use of our decomposition method by analysing the changes in the redistributive impact of the tax and transfer system in Australia between 1999 and 2007. We find that labour supply changes, and in particular the increase in employment rates over the period, explain to a large extent the observed reduction in the redistributive effect of the tax-transfer system. A sizable part of these labour supply changes were found to be direct responses to tax-transfer reforms. Interestingly, we find that tax reforms were not responsible for the observed reduction in tax progressivity.