We analyze the recent evolution of ethnic economic inequality in Peru, a major source of social discontent in the country. Household survey data indicates that recent decades of high output growth also witnessed a substantial narrowing of socioeconomic gaps among ethnicities. Most notably, the...

Going forward, Korea faces two closely related challenges: sustaining economic growth against the backdrop of a rapidly aging population and ameliorating income inequality. This paper argues that a gradual increase in social spending could promote more sustainable and inclusive growth in Korea....

We identify structural breaks in economic growth in 140 countries and use these to define ""growth spells:"" periods of high growth preceded by an upbreak and ending either with a downbreak or with the end of the sample. Growth spells tend to be shorter in African and Latin American countries...

This paper assesses how pro-poor and inclusive Asia's recent growth has been, and what factors have been driving these outcomes. It finds that while poverty has fallen across the region over the last two decades, inequality has increased, dampening the impact of growth on poverty reduction. As a...

This paper provides empirical evidence that the propensity for political instability in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) has been increased by low tax revenues and deteriorations in the terms of trade. The direct effect of political instability on economic growth is not statistically...

There is an extensive literature noting that high inflation can add to income inequality, and a parallel literature assessing the effect of rising food prices on the poor. This paper attempts to combine these strands by dividing inflation into food and nonfood inflation and assessing whether...

We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures....

We examine the relationship between trade and financial globalization and the rise in inequality in most countries in recent decades. We find technological progress as having a greater impact than globalization on inequality. The limited overall impact of globalization reflects two offsetting...

We analyze the performance of kernel density methods applied to grouped data to estimate poverty (as applied in Sala-i-Martin, 2006, QJE). Using Monte Carlo simulations and household surveys, we find that the technique gives rise to biases in poverty estimates, the sign and magnitude of which...