Why are some countries so much richer than others? Development Accounting is a first-pass attempt at organizing the answer around two proximate determinants: factors of production and efficiency. It answers the question "how much of the cross-country income variance can be attributed to...

This paper examines the extent to which the process of globalization can explain the observed widening in the cross--country distribution of output--per--worker. In particular examine whether the opening up of trade in a Hecksher--Ohlin type model of trade can explain the observed changes. On...

Lack of income convergence for the world as a whole has led to concerns about the impact of globalization of markets on world inequality. GDP per capita is usually used to proxy for the quality of life of individuals living in different countries. However, well-being is also affected by quantity...

An optimal linear world income tax that maximizes a border-neutral social welfare function provides a drastic reduction in world consumption inequality, dropping the Gini coefficient from 0.69 to 0.25. In contrast an optimal decentralized (i.e., within countries) redistribution has miniscule...

We estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 125 countries between 1970 and 1998. We estimate poverty rates and headcounts by integrating the density function below the $1/day and $2/day poverty lines. We find that poverty rates decline...