Beal’s (1995) method of estimating the value of Carnarvon Gorge for recreational use is re‐examined. When an inconsistency in her estimation procedure is corrected, the estimated value of Carnarvon Gorge for camping is found to be six times higher. The sensitivity of the estimate to the...

Sri Lanka liberalized its economy in 1977, paving the way for more rapid economic growth and higher rates of job creation. But tensions over distributional issues still plague the body politic. This paper investigates the evolution of Sri Lanka's expenditure distribution in the period 1980-2002...

As indicators of social welfare, the incidence of inequality and poverty is of ongoing concern to policy makers and researchers alike. Of particular interest are the changes in inequality and poverty over time, which are typically assessed through the estimation of income distributions. From...

We develop a general approach to estimation and inference for income distributions using grouped or aggregate data that are typically available in the form of population shares and class mean incomes, with unknown group bounds. We derive generic moment conditions and an optimal weight matrix...

The conventional formula for estimating the extended Gini coefficient is a covariance formula provided by Lerman and Yitzhaki (1989). We suggest an alternative estimator, obtained by approximating the Lorenz curve by a series of linear segments. In a Monte Carlo experiment designed to assess the...

The Lorenz curve relates the cumulative proportion of income to the cumulative proportion of population. When a particular functional form of the Lorenz curve is specified it is typically estimated by linear or nonlinear least squares assuming that the error terms are independently and normally...