This paper assesses the validity of the perception-based governance indicators used by the US Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) for aid allocation decisions. By conducting Explanatory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of data from 1996 to 2009, we find that although the MCA purports to measure...

Substantial cross-national differences in poverty alleviation are well documented, but theextent to which different parts of the social transfer system account for this variation is still relatively unexamined. This study analyses the redistributive effects of specific social policy institutions...

Most examinations of United States domestic antipoverty policy are inherently parochial, for they are based on the experiences of only our nation in isolation from the others. However, cross-national comparisons can also teach lessons about antipoverty policy. While all nations value low...

We show how classic source-decomposition and subgroup-decomposition methods can be reconciled with regression methodology used in the recent literature. We also highlight some pitfalls that arise from uncritical use of the regression approach. The LIS database is used to compare the approaches...

Total household income inequality can be very different from inequality measured at the income per-capita level but only in recent years has the patter of this divergence been investigated. In this paper, result form Coulter et al. (1992) using a one-parameter equivalence scale are updated using...

This paper begins by asking how poverty in affluent countries should be measured, before examining recent evidence on poverty intensity and its social significance. Section 1 advocates use of the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index of poverty intensity and introduces the 'Poverty Box' as a summary...

This paper analyses the long memory properties of quarterly real output per capita in the US (1948Q1 ¿ 2008Q3) using non-parametric, semi-parametric and parametric techniques. The results vary substantially depending on the methodology employed. Evidence of mean reversion is obtained in a...