This paper examines the functional relationships between income inequality, economic factors, institutions, and Kuznets' inverted-U hypothesis. A model that incorporates interactive as well as direct effects of several factors to capture their combined effect on inequality is developed. The...

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...

A key aspect defining the contemporary income distribution is the (increasing) share the top holds compared to the rest. This paper shows that income concentration increases towards the very top of the distribution, while the shares the middle- and upper-middle-income groups hold remain stable...

Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. We construct two new metadata...

The level and composition of public expenditures and revenues both have implications for economic development, as shown by the 'fiscal multiplier' and the 'quality of public finance' literature. Public finance decisions also influence the distribution of income. Based on a review of the...

Index of refraction is found to be a good measure of economic inequality within the Lorenz curve framework. It has origin in geometrical optics, where it measures bending of a ray of light passing from one transparent medium into another. As light refracts according to characteristics of...

We present a unified structural equation modelling framework for the regression-based decomposition of rank-dependent indicators of socioeconomic inequality of health and compare it with a simple ordinary least squares regression. The structural equation modelling framework forms the basis for a...

This paper aims at measuring and analysing for the first time inequality in the distribution of expenditures among households in Togo according to the characteristics of household heads. The study is based on the most recent survey (QUIBB 2006) and the monetary well-being indicator used is total...

This paper points to flaws in Gini decompositions by income sources and population subgroups and to common pitfalls in the interpretation of decomposition results, focusing on methods within the framework of Rao (1969). We argue that within this framework Gini elasticities may provide the only...

We demonstrate that a rank-preserving transfer from a richer individual to a poorer individual can exacerbate income inequality (when inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient). This happens when individuals' preferences depend negatively not only on work time (effort) but also on low...