The usual practice in empirical distributional studies is to use either disposable income or consumption expenditure as a proxy for welfare. Essentially, both variables are used as approximations of the unobserved “permanent income” of the population members. This paper exploits the...

This paper addresses the efficient management of natural resource revenues in capital-scarce developing economies. We depart from usual prescriptions based on the permanent income hypothesis, since for capital-scarce countries it is preferable to invest domestically. Since revenue streams are...

Countries with substantial revenues from renewable resources face a complex range of revenue management issues. What is the optimal time profile of consumption from the revenue, and how much should be saved? Should saving be invested in foreign funds or in the domestic economy? How does...

Income mobility is often thought to equalize permanent incomes and thereby to improve social welfare. The welfare analysis of mobility often fails, however, to account for the cost of the variability of periodic incomes around permanent incomes. This paper assesses the net welfare benefit of...

This paper examines how durable goods and financial frictions shape the business cycle of a small open economy subject to shocks to trend and transitory shocks. In the data, nondurable consumption is not as volatile as income for both developed and emerging market economies. The simulation of...

The literature on inequality among economies has focused on analysing the dispersion of indicators such as annual per capita income. This paper adopts a different approach, as it considers the life cycle dimensionof inequality, life expectancy and whether annual per capita income can be expected...