In order to activate the cycle of wealth production, promote social justice and eliminate poverty and inequality, developing countries are currently faced with a multiplicity of structural problems. According to some economic theories, this is mainly due to inefficient or lack of access to...

In this paper we outline (i) why sigma-convergence may not accompany beta-convergence, (ii) discuss evidence of beta-convergence in the U.S., and (iii) use U.S. county-level data containing over 3,000 cross-sectional observations to demonstrate that sigma-convergence has not occurred at the...

In this paper, a simple model is proposed to endogenize voting behavior that incorporates a sense of duty to vote. We assume that a sense of duty to vote is an increasing function of a person's human capital and the public faith in politics, and those with a higher sense of duty often vote....

We present a framework for studying the relation between the distribution of income and the distribution of housing prices that is based on an assignment model of households with heterogeneous incomes and houses of heterogeneous quality. The equilibrium distribution of prices depends on both...

We examine the growth of mobile phone technology over the past decade and consider its potential impacts upon quality of life in low-income countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. We first provide an overview of the patterns and determinants of mobile phone coverage in...

This study uses a unique natural experiment to test a simple model of international differences in workers’ wages and productivity. Large differences in wages across countries could arise from several sources. These include barriers to trade in outputs, differences in technology, differences...

The amount of taxes and public expenditures seems to be uncorrelated to the level of market inequality in OECD countries. This empirical evidence is diffcult to be rationalized in a standard median voter theorem setting, where individuals rationally choose their preferred redistribution scheme....

The interaction between income distribution, accumulation, employment and the utilization of capital is central to macroeconomic models in the `heterodox' tradition. This paper examines the stylized pattern of these variables using US data for the period after 1948. We look at the trends and...

Income inequality is one of the ongoing concerns for people, organisations, governments, policy makers and the whole world. Understanding this phenomenon is very complex and requires extensive research as it is part of a hyper-complex environment in permanent change. The aim of this paper is to...

This paper shows that increasing government social expenditures can make a substantive contribution to increasing household consumption in China. The paper first undertakes an empirical study of the relationship between the savings rate and social expenditures for a panel of OECD countries and...