This paper takes income distribution as a case study of the role of data in economics. After describing the transformation which has taken place with regard to the availability of data on income inequality, it discusses how the comparability of these estimates is brought into question by...

This paper presents evidence that the quality of survey data on household incomes systematically improves across waves of a panel. Our estimates indicate that the effect of being interviewed for a second time is to increase the mean of reported monthly income by £142 (8 percent). Dependent...

The Millennium Development Goal of halving the incidence of extreme poverty from its 1990 level will be achieved in 2015, and the international development community is now moving to a new goal of “ending extreme poverty.” However, the data needed to monitor progress remain severely limited....

South Africa is considering introducing carbon taxes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We evaluate potential impacts using a dynamic economy-wide model linked to an energy sector model. Simulation results indicate that a phased-in carbon tax that reaches US$30 per ton of CO2 by 2022 achieves...

This paper presents a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for the analysis of environmental policies towards mining activities, and shows for the case of South Africa how it can be implemented numerically. The CGE model belongs to the class of static, trade-focussed models along the lines...