The economic implications and the income distribution effects of the CU between Turkey and the EU have been studied by applying a general equilibrium model to the Turkish economy. The numerical results show that the CU is not trade diverting. Most importantly, urban (rural) groups are better...

A recent paper by Dollar and Kraay (2001) finds that higher primary educational attainment of the workforce does not increase the income of the poor except for its effect on average income. We test the robustness of their finding by using a broader measure of human capital that accounts for...

There are several narratives connecting the financial crisis - as well as the Great Depression of the 1930s - with the functional or personal income distribution and its pre-crisis movements. The paper investigates whether this claim can be supported with evidence showing that the crisis was...

We develop a new model of trade in which educational institutions drive comparative advantage and determine the distribution of human capital within and across countries. Our framework exploits a multiplicity of sectors and the continuous support of human capital choices to demonstrate that...

In this paper we apply two statistical models to the measurement of polarization to Israeli income data over the past decade in order to empirically detect income classes as sub-populations of incomes concentrated around an optimal number of poles. The statistical models compared are a...

The distributions of income and wealth in countries across the world are found to possess some robust and stable features independent of the specific economic, social and political conditions of the countries. We discuss a few physics-inspired multi-agent dynamic models along with their...

Economists tend to exalt the virtues of free international trade, while politicians are more skeptical. This paper suggests that this is the case because politicians mainly worry about the income distribution effects of trade liberalization, while economists focus on efficiency. Using textbook...

This paper provides a technical description of GEM-PIA, a recursive-dynamic computable General Equilibrium Model for Poverty Impact Analysis in individual countries. The model combines the optimizing behavior of CGE models with the asset portfolio behavior of macromodels, thereby addressing the...

This paper describes the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bolivia for the year 1997. Three distinctive features render the SAM a useful starting point for distributional analyses. First, production in the agricultural and services sector is split up into formal and informal...