1 / 16

Mobility and Meritocracy

LABOR June 2007. Mobility and Meritocracy. A B Atkinson, Nuffield College, Oxford. Meritocracy as a political objective Mobility seen as key to meritocracy Concern (in UK) that becoming less mobile and meritocratic. Why?. How?. True?. Amartya Sen:

selma-russo
Download Presentation

Mobility and Meritocracy

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. LABOR June 2007 Mobility and Meritocracy A B Atkinson, Nuffield College, Oxford

  2. Meritocracy as a political objective • Mobility seen as key to meritocracy • Concern (in UK) that becoming less mobile and meritocratic Why? How? True?

  3. Amartya Sen: • “The idea of meritocracy may have many virtues, but clarity is not one of them”. • Instrumental: “the incentive view of merit is underdefined, since it is dependent on the preferred view of a good society” • Intrinsic: “quality of such actions, judged in a result-independent way”.

  4. How relate to standard welfare economics? Trade-off between equity and efficiency embodied in Social Welfare Function based on individual welfares. Mirrlees model: Assume wage rate = marginal product = ability Net earnings E = Aℓ – T(Aℓ) where A denotes ability and ℓ = effort/hours (leave effort on one side ℓ = 1). SWF W ≡ ∑i V(Ai-Ti) Where does meritocracy come in?

  5. Roland Bénabou: • Two-dimensional measure of meritocracy: • Assignment based on talent rather than background • Extent to which reward is based on talent Taken for granted in Mirrlees model

  6. Assignment Model (Mayer, RE Stat 1960) • Self-employed produce A • Entrepreneur employs (λ-1) people, generating profit λA-w-c • Workers receive wage depending on match • w = w0+(1-θ)λA • Workers decide on basis of E{w}

  7. If all A ≥ A* are entrepreneurs, and distribution has a Pareto tail, then E{A} = hA* (h > 1) determines Ao such that all with A ≤ Ao are workers. Entrepreneurs Assignment Self-employed Workers E{w} Ability Ao A* Reward

  8. Et = αAt + βEt-1 + εt What to do with mobility?

  9. Mobility between and within generations AF EF eF AS ES eS r(ES , EF) or r(eS, eF) or r(Es, eF) ? Depends on mechanisms

  10. Relation with economic model (demand side) Assignment model without self employment and λ=2 (set median A = 1) With random assignment, output = 2; With perfect meritocracy, output = 2h > 2.; With β inheriting position, output = 2h - 2β[h(1-γ)-1] where γ is the degree of heritability of ability

  11. Inter-generational mobility in the UK NCDS (born 1958): total income of parents in 1974 and earnings of sons in 1991 BCS (born 1970): total income of parents in 1986 and earnings of sons in 2000 “We see sharp falls in cross-generational mobility of economic status between the cohorts” (Blanden, Goodman, Gregg and Machin).

  12. York 1950-1975-8 and NCDS 1974 and 1991/9 • special sample (York) • small sample size (287) • not a cohort • Compare elasticity for men (age adjusted earnings) • York (Atkinson et al) 0.418 (0.097) • NCDS (Jäntti et al) 0.359 (0.03)

  13. Conclusions • Need to clarify meaning of meritocracy • Need model of labour market that separates different elements • Relation to mobility is complex • Intergenerational mobility in UK either ∩ or

More Related