This paper has four main objectives: (1) to monitor the rise of poverty and income inequality during the first decade of Russian transition; (2 to analyze the performance of the welfare state in reducing poverty and income inequality; (3) to identify the most vulnerable groups of transition; and...

The authors analyze to what extent and how the tax burden should be shifted towards top income earners in order to reduce income inequality. Starting from Lambert and Aronson (Inequality decomposition analysis and the Gini coefficient revisited 1993) and Alvaredo (A note on the relationship...

The authors analyze to what extent and how the tax burden should be shifted towards top income earners in order to reduce income inequality. Starting from Lambert and Aronson (Inequality decomposition analysis and the Gini coefficient revisited 1993) and Alvaredo (A note on the relationship...

The evolution of income distribution over two centuries is an attractive topic because it allows one to test the inverse U-curve hypothesis using long series instead of cross-section data. In Section 1 the distribution trends in countries where global data are available, is considered, that is...

A 2015 World Bank report on attainment of Millennium Development Goals concludes that the number of extremely poor has dropped substantially in all regions with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa. We assess if poverty is in the African gene by revisiting the findings of Ashraf and Galor (2013,...

A 2015 World Bank report on attainment of Millennium Development Goals concludes that the number of extremely poor has dropped substantially in all regions with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa. We assess if poverty is in the African gene by revisiting the findings of Ashraf and Galor (2013,...

In this paper the authors recall the history of Jubilee debt cancellations, emphasizing what their social purpose was at that time. They note that it would not be possible to copy that procedure exactly nowadays, primarily because most debt/credit relationships are intermediated via financial...

In this paper the authors recall the history of Jubilee debt cancellations, emphasizing what their social purpose was at that time. They note that it would not be possible to copy that procedure exactly nowadays, primarily because most debt/credit relationships are intermediated via financial...

The associations between fertility and outcomes in the family and society have been treated as causal, but this is inaccurate if fertility is a choice coordinated by families with other life-cycle decisions, including labour supply of mothers and children, child human capital, and savings....

This dissertation includes three empirical essays on development economics and one on the economics of education. The first essay (co-authored by Stephan Klasen) is a contribution to the debate surrounding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the on-going debate about what international...