Based on tax records data from Ecuador, we analyse gender differences in top income groups from 2008 to 2017. Ecuador represents an interesting case as it shares many trends with other countries in the region in terms of women's status in the labour market. While we observe a significant...

A common finding in the empirical civil war literature is that population size and per capita income are highly significant predictors of civil war incidence and onset. This paper shows that the common finding of population size and per capita income having a significant average effect on civil...

Using the 2004-05 India Human Development Survey data, we estimate and decompose the earnings of household businesses owned by historically marginalized social groups known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs), and non-SCSTs across the earnings distribution. We find clear differences in...

The quality of data on employment income is explored using Tanzanian and Zambian household survey datasets. The extent of missing and implausible income data is assessed and four different methods are applied to impute missing or implausible values. The four imputation methods are also applied...

We use long-spanning individual longitudinal data to examine the long-term labour market outcomes of low-tier informal workers. We investigate their characteristics, calculate the extent of switching, and identify the characteristics of those who have switched. Finally, we estimate the earnings...

This paper explores the role of the recently introduced unemployment insurance benefit (seguro de desempleo) in protecting incomes in case of unemployment in Ecuador. We use ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador, to simulate entitlement to the unemployment insurance benefit...

Single-party political systems exist in a number of countries, such as China and Viet Nam. In these countries, party membership is potentially an important source of economic and social status. This paper investigates these effects and the mechanisms behind them. In particular, we use household-...

Rising levels of income inequality and tight government budgets have spurred discussions in many developing nations about how to appropriately tax high-income earners. In this paper, we study taxpayer responses to an increase in the top marginal tax rate in South Africa, drawing on exceptionally...

This paper aims to assess the extent to which top earners in Ecuador were affected by the COVID-19 crisis compared to other segments of the population. Our analysis uses administrative data for individuals affiliated to social security between January 2019 and December 2021. We identify the top...

Macroeconomic instability has been increasingly considered as a factor lowering average income growth and, in this way, is a factor slowing down poverty reduction. But it can also result in slower poverty reduction for a given average rate of growth, due to poverty traps, often examined at the...