The quality of data on employment income is explored using Tanzanian and Zambian household survey datasets. The extent of missing and implausible income data is assessed and four different methods are applied to impute missing or implausible values. The four imputation methods are also applied...

Over the years, money-metric measures of inequality such as the Gini coefficient and the Palma Ratio, as frequently used in Ghana, have become useful in providing quantitative measures of welfare distribution that enable a better understanding of the extent and nature of inequality. From these...

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions.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...

The paucity of reliable, timely household consumption data in many low- and middleincome countries has made it difficult to assess how global poverty has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Standard poverty measurement requires collecting household consumption data, which is rarely done by...

The paper reviews the steady and widespread decline in income inequality which has taken place in most of Latin America over 2002-10 and which - if continued for another 2-3 years - would reduce the average regional income inequality to pre-liberalization levels. The paper then focuses on the...

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...