Recent studies of trends in the distribution of income across countries and globally have produced highly conflicting results. Several studies, including some from the World Bank and UNDP, have reported that income disparities between nations have more than doubled since 1960. Other...

The FAO provides estimates of the prevalence of undernutrition which are claimed to be comparable over countries and time. These estimates form the empirical foundation for the resolution adopted by 186 governments at the World Food summit in 1996, with the intent of reducing the number of...

A very large data set on the incidence of children with an anthropometric status below standard norms in India has recently been made available to the international research community. This paper is a preliminary attempt to provide a “map” of the anthropometric status of children in the...

There is only one set of estimates of the prevalence of chronic undernutrition world-wide. These estimates emanate from the FAO and are claimed to be comparable across countries. In this paper it is demonstrated that the FAO has used an estimation model (and data) that induce bias in the...

Over the past 40 years economists have devoted considerable effort to estimating long-run trends in real commodity prices. The results indicate that the real prices for many commodities have fallen, suggesting to the surprise of many that resource scarcity is declining over time. Almost all of...

Over the past few years, a large number of studies have aimed at estimating changes in relative income distribution across countries and globally. Some of the studies find the distribution to have worsened considerably, others that it has become more even. One objective of this article is to...