The scope of this paper is to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Gini index by providing the original formulae. Corrado Gini introduced his index for the first time in a 1912 book published in Italian under the name of “Variabilità e Mutabilità” (Variability and Mutability). This...

The paper develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the distribution of Aid. We call this concept the income lever and define it as the relation between the welfare of the...

The paper defines the Gini index as the sum of individual contributions where individual contributions are interpreted as the degree of diversity of each individual from all other members of society. Among various possible forms of individual contributions to the Gini found in the literature, we...

Female labor participation in the Arab world is low compared with the level of economic development of Arab countries. Beyond anecdotal evidence and cross-country studies, there is little evidence on what could explain this phenomenon. This paper uses the richest set of panel data available for...

“Growth is good for the poor” is a ubiquitous statement and one generally backed by theory, research and history. In the long-run, growth reduces poverty. Yet, growth in output - per se - is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for poverty reduction in the short-term. The paper...

Under increasing budget pressure, Morocco carried out an extensive set of subsidy reforms in 2014 and is planning for further reforms for 2015?2017, which will eliminate most consumers'subsidies. This paper evaluates (ex post) the 2014 reforms and simulates (ex ante) the impact on household...

Shortly before the 2011 Libyan revolution, consumers'subsidies were rapidly increased by the regime in an effort to reduce social discontent. In the aftermath of the revolution, these subsidies became important for people's subsistence, but also a very heavy burden for the state budget. Since...

Despite sustained output growth since 1997, low-income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries (CIS-7) have not experienced growth in employment, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in transitional economies and labeled as"jobless growth."The author addresses the causes of this phenomenon...