A major difficulty faced by researchers who want to study the consumption and savings behavior of households is the lack of reliable panel data on household expenditures. One possibility is to use surveys that follow the same households over time, but such data are rare and they typically have...

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax policy is the driving force. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with...

Poverty in low-income countries is usually measured with large and infrequent household surveys. A challenge is to find methods to measure poverty more frequently. The objective of this study is to test a method for predicting poverty, based upon a statistical model utilizing consumption surveys...

We propose a first order bias correction term for the Gini index to reduce the bias due to grouping. The first order correction term is obtained from studying the estimator of the Gini index within a measurement error framework. In addition, it reveals an intuitive formula for the remaining...

We explore the relationship between import protection and the household distribution of income. We first develop a general-equilibrium mapping from tariffs to household inequality measures. This also yields predictions for linkages between tariffs, development level, and observed household...

We analyze general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing social welfare into real income level and variance components through Gini and Atkinson indexes. We embed these inequality-adjusted social welfare functions in a general...

The inequality dataset compiled in the 1990s by the World Bank and extendedby the UN has been both widely used and strongly criticized. The criticisms raisequestions about conclusions drawn from secondary inequality datasets in general. Wedevelop techniques to deal with national and...

We provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years of population data from Norway's administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results. First, individuals earn markedly different average returns on their net worth (a standard...

On what and to what extent private households in Germany spend money varies significantly depending on employment status, income, and age. As this study based on the most current official sample survey of income and expenditure from 2013 shows, unemployed households on average spend over half of...