This paper revisits four recent cross-country empirical studies on the effects of inequality on growth. All four studies report strongly significant negative effects, using the popular system generalized method of moments estimator that is frequently used in cross-country growth empirics. This...

This paper provides evidence consistent with elite capture of Social Fund investment projects in Ecuador. Exploiting a unique combination of data-sets on village-level income distributions, Social Fund project administration, and province level electoral results, the authors test a simple model...

We analyze general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing social welfare into real income level and variance components and emphasizing Gini and Atkinson indexes. We embed these inequality adjusted social welfare functions in a...

This study assesses the redistributive impact of fiscal policy -- and its individual elements -- in Zambia. Zambia's 2015 fiscal policy reduces inequality; the largest reduction is created by in-kind public service expenditures on education. However, fiscal policy also increases poverty in three...

This study assesses the redistributive impact of fiscal policy ?? including expenditures and taxation ?? in the Arab Republic of Egypt. Using a broadly applied methodology, a fiscal incidence analysis is conducted using survey and government data for fiscal year 2015. Evidence shows that...

The paper combines state-level fiscal data with household survey data to assess the links between sub-national fiscal policy and income inequality in Brazil over the period 1995-2011. The results indicate that a tighter fiscal stance at the sub-national level is not associated with a...

The economy of Moldova, which has one of the lowest levels of gross national income per capita in the World Bank Europe and Central Asia region, is strongly linked to the outside world, especially to the neighboring countries of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States. This...

Colombia has the seventh highest Gini coefficient of income inequality in the world. The Santos Administration is aware of this challenge and is taking important measures to reduce disparities. The government is also aspiring to join the OECD, which exhibits much lower income disparities, mainly...

This study analyzes the incidence of public revenues (tax collection) and expenditures (including direct and indirect transfers, indirect subsidies, and in-kind transfers) on the level of poverty and inequality in Uganda, using the internationally recognized methodology developed by the...

This paper applies a comprehensive tax-benefit incidence analysis to estimate the distributional effects of fiscal policy in Chile in 2013. Four results are indicative of an overall positive net effect of fiscal interventions on poverty and inequality. First, subsidies exert a positive, yet...