"Measured by the Gini coefficient, income inequality in Brazil rose from 0.57 in 1981 to 0.63 in 1989, before falling … back to 0.56 in 2004. This latest figure would lower Brazil's world inequality rank from 2nd (in 1989) to 10th (in 2004 … the determinants of Brazil's distributional reversal over this period. The rise in inequality in the 1980s appears to have …

the cross-country literature on income inequality and growth may have been barking up the wrong tree, and that alternative …