Some middle-income economies, many of which Latin American, have not achieved to make the transition into high-income status for long years and are allegedly trapped in middle-income status. While there is considerable consensus on the proximate causes of this phenomenon, we present a global...

The recent literature has argued for high concentration of earnings, differences in rates of return on assets and bequests as potential determinants of the high level of wealth concentration in the US. Analyzing the joint distribution of earnings, capital income and net worth, we find evidence...

Using individual tax returns data, this paper explores the redistributive effect of Ecuador's personal income tax (PIT) from 2007 to 2011. We follow common practice in the context of tax incidence analysis and we compute different indexes of progressivity and redistributive impact of income...

This article analyzes Latin American and Caribbean income inequality, making three important contributions. First, we show that politics not only shapes redistribution, but also affects inequality produced by the market, with much of the effect occurring through the market conditioning...

This paper considers a parametric model for the joint distribution of income and wealth. The model is used to analyze income and wealth inequality in five OECD countries using comparable household-level survey data. We focus on the dependence parameter between the two variables and study whether...

Conflicts of interest over the generosity and structure of redistribution and social insurance (jointly: social policy) include that between the relatively poor and wealthy - which yields the familiar result that median-voter demand for broad redistribution increases in the income skew - and...

This paper considers a parametric model for the joint distribution of income and wealth. The model is used to analyze income and wealth inequality in five OECD countries using comparable household-level survey data. We focus on the dependence parameter between the two variables and study whether...

This paper assesses the impact on household incomes of the COVID-19 pandemic and governments' policy responses in April 2020 in four large and severely hit European countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK. We provide comparative evidence on the level of relative and absolute welfare...

This study evaluates which type of benefit-a universal benefit, a proxy mean-tested benefit, or a categorical benefit- better cushions the poverty effects of income shocks in a developing economy. We compare the effectiveness of the three benefit schemes on poverty first conceptually and then by...

Using the 2004 income survey of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office we consider the targeting of two types of unemployment-related benefits: a) unemployment insurance and re-training benefits and b) the unemloyment assistance (UA). The evidence suggests that unemployment-related benefits...