Picture: credit to Engineers Ireland.
Steffen Hertog, Associate Professor in Comparative Politics in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science, has published a paper in Energy Transitions (Hertog, 2017) which relates the efficiency in wealth sharing and basic income.
The paper makes the case that hydrocarbon producers with higher rents per capita make a unique category of the rent-dependent nations. Those that face specific development challenges not present in mid-rent nations.
With a look into the patterns of rent distributions in high-rent countries, excessive public employment, and energy subsidies, Hertog argues that these lead to lower labor productivity and the exclusion of the national population from the privatized labor market.
Hertog proposes unconditional cash payments in high-rent countries as a means to minimize the distortion patterns in the hiring of nationals for the private labor market and in labor productivity resulting from rent distribution.
More information at:
Stefan Hertog, “Making wealth sharing more efficient in high-rent countries: the citizens’ income”, Energy Transitions, December 2017
