We examine the linear and nonlinear long-run relationship between public expenditure and institutional quality, and income inequality in Asia and the Pacific. By applying panel cointegration methods using a dataset from 1988 to 2014, our main findings suggest that public expenditure and...

Using a new set of micro evidence from an original survey of 28 transition countries, we show that democracy increases citizens’ support for the market by guaranteeing income redistribution to inequality-averse agents. Our identification strategy relies on the restriction of the sample to...

In recent years, policymaking in China has put increasing emphasis on stemming the growth in inequality, which had been fairly steep since the 1980s. Policy action has taken the form of regional development measures and of reforms of various aspects of the social safety net broadly defined. The...

The issue of income disparity has long plagued South Africa because of the political environment that existed before the country's 1994 democratic transition. Based on the widely used Gini index, which gauges global inequality, the nation routinely has some of the highest rates of income...

While gender gaps in average math performance are close to zero in developed countries, women are still strongly underrepresented among math high performers. Using data from five successive waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we show that this underrepresentation...

While gender gaps in average math performance are close to zero in developed countries, women are still strongly underrepresented among math high performers. Using data from five successive waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we show that this underrepresentation...

We develop an endogenous fertility model of social stratification with two hereditary classes: warriors and peasants. Our model shows that the extra cost warriors must incur to raise their children and to equip them for war is the key determinant of (1) the relative sizes of both classes, and...

The democratic government in South Africa has developed a system of social grants to combat the high levels of poverty and inequality inherited from the apartheid regime. With the help of modest economic growth and an associated increase in per capita household income, the introduction and...

This paper explores the nexus between the phenomenon of increasing income inequality and redistributive effects of the public sector. In an empirical analysis of seven OECD countries the redistributive effect will be examined by measuring the difference between inequality of market incomes and...

The link between income inequality and governmental redistribution is still subject to intense research and debate. Starting with the median-voter-hypothesis, a plethora of theoretical models have been developed during the last three decades to identify and explain possible causal relationships....