Minoiu, Camelia; Reddy, Sanjay - International Monetary Fund (IMF) - 2008
We analyze the performance of kernel density methods applied to grouped data to estimate poverty (as applied in Sala …-i-Martin, 2006, QJE). Using Monte Carlo simulations and household surveys, we find that the technique gives rise to biases in poverty … estimates, the sign and magnitude of which vary with the bandwidth, the kernel, the number of datapoints, and across poverty …