Many of the world's LDCs are plagued by recurring conflict. Conflict impedes sustainable development through various channels, creating conditions conducive to further conflict. Conflict has redistributive impacts, particularly when it erupts in resource-rich countries. Between 2002 and 2011,...

Incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes. This is because, in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades, changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes...

A key aspect defining the contemporary income distribution is the (increasing) share the top holds compared to the rest. This paper shows that income concentration increases towards the very top of the distribution, while the shares the middle- and upper-middle-income groups hold remain stable...

This article, using ERF-LIS harmonized microdata, develops an empirical model to investigate the unexplored extent and fuel poverty explanatory factors in Egypt and Jordan. First, we use the "Low income - High Consumption" indicator to measure the fuel poverty extent. Second, we implement a...

This study examines empirically the impact of income polarization on economic growth in an unbalanced panel of more than 70 countries during the 1960-2005 period. We calculate various polarization indices using existing micro-level datasets, as well as datasets reconstructed from grouped data on...

We examine whether economic downturns reshape the distribution of population income giving rise to a "middle-class squeeze." We test this hypothesis using alternative definitions of middle-class, such as income-based measures from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and perceived measures from...

We document the evolution of intergenerational income (IGI ) inequality, measured as the relative income between old and young individuals, using harmonised microdata from 42 countries at different stages of economic development. In the last 20 years, IGI inequality has increased (in favour of...

From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the fiscal vertical imbalance is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to a reduction in the extent of redistributive fiscal policies if the maximal tolerable size of government has...

Current studies addressing the rise in inequality confine themselves to country-level developments. This paper delineates trends in earnings inequality and employment at the sectoral level for eight LIS countries between 1985-2005. Earnings inequality mainly manifests itself within rather than...

We develop a quantitative heterogeneous-agents general equilibrium model that reproduces the income inequalities of 32 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Using this model, we compute the optimal income tax rate for each country under the equal-weight...