We perform development accounting in accordance with Weil (2005, 2007) in a cross-state analysis of India. Results of similar magnitude are found, demonstrating that health can account for 1% to 18% of income differences depending on the health measure.

By now, there is a wide range of methods to construct multidimensional well-being indices, differing in the way they transform, aggregate and weight the relevant dimensions. This paper uses a fuzzy theory approach to propose a new weighting scheme for the dimensions. These weights play a crucial...

Using data on inequality for 21 OECD countries over the period 1870–2011 this paper tests the Piketty hypothesis that income inequality is likely to grow in the 21st century. It is shown that the null hypothesis of trend stationarity of inequality cannot be rejected at conventional...

The generalised Lorenz criterion is widely used for making welfare comparisons within and across countries on the basis of their income distributions. Experimental studies have challenged this way of proceeding by showing that the principle of transfers, which underlies the generalised Lorenz...

We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser’ behavior and less...