The paper investigates how comparisons of multivariate inequality can be made robust to varying the intensity of focus on the share of the population that are more relatively deprived. It follows the dominance approach to making inequality comparisons, as developed for instance by Atkinson...

Progress towards the MDGs is expected to slow as a consequence of the global economic downturn. This study applies an economy-wide framework to analyze the impact of the crisis on MDG achievement in six Latin American countries. It finds significant setbacks towards the goals and, in the case of...

This paper develops a methodology to estimate the entire population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data. We do this through the estimation of the parameters of mixtures of distributions that allow for maximal parametric flexibility. The statistical approach we develop enables...

We analyze a two-task work environment with risk-neutral but inequality averse individuals. For the agent employed in task 2 effort is verifiable, while in task 1 it is not. Accordingly, agent 1 receives an incentive contract which, due to his wealth constraint, leads to a rent that the other...

The paper deals with poverty orderings when multidimensional attributes exhibit some degree of comparability. The paper focuses on an important special case of this, that is, comparisons of poverty that make use of incomes at different time periods. The ordering criteria extend the power of...

The aim of this paper is to assess the relative impact of aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows received from the European Union (EU) on the GDP of the large countries of the CFA zone. An error correction model is used based on the data of a panel. Estimated results show that, contrary...

In most welfare analyses, especially in the literature on normative inequality measurement, it is a commonplace to assume a direct relationship between the distribution of income and social welfare. As a result, this relationship is formally summarized by a single function, called a reduced-form...

We study learning in perfect competition. A representative price-taking firm sells a good whose quality is unknown to some buyers. The uninformed buyers use the price to infer information about quality. Even though the firm is a price-taker, information is disseminated though the price. It is...

In a non-market environment, there is no pressure coming from competitors that leads firms toward efficiency. Public education system is the target of many critiques as being such an example of inefficiency. Some papers attempted to measure the level of inefficiency of schools or school...

We examine the effects of different sequences of work and rest on the daily productivity of workers who planted trees in the province of British Columbia, Canada, comparing the intertemporal productivity profiles of planters who were paid either fixed wages or piece rates. We find that planters...