Using household surveys from Yemen and Djibouti, the paper analyzes determinants of qat consumptions in two countries. The results confirm huge importance of qat in daily life: with between one-half (in Djibouti) and 70 percent (in Yemen) of all households reporting at least one user. But in...

Global inequality between world citizens, using the new PPP data (just published as part of the 2005 ICP), is estimated to be about 70 Gini points. This is some 4-5 Gini points higher than previously thought. The increases are even greater if one uses the Theil index.

Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and life expectancies as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial societies using...

We develop and implement a method for measuring the frequency of changes in power among distinct leaders and ideologically distinct parties that is comparable across political systems. We find that more frequent alternation in power is associated with the emergence of better governance in...

Using household surveys from Yemen and Djibouti, the paper analyses determinants of qat consumptions in two countries. The results confirm huge importance of qat in daily life: with between one-half (in Djibouti) and 70% (in Yemen) of all households reporting at least one user. But in Yemen, qat...

The reformulation of the median voter hypothesis and its testing proposed in Milanovic (2000) has been criticized from four different perspectives. The critiques are discussed and assessed.

This paper, using for the first time household survey data from 26 post-communist countries, covering the period 1990-2005, examines correlates of unprecedented increases in inequality registered by most of these economies. We find that, after controlling

The authors argue that the pattern of social policy in developing countries is determined by two key factors: the domestic political influence of formal sector workers (who provide the most substantial roadblock to reform), and the absolute income level (gross domestic product per capita) of the...