Poverty measurement and the analysis of the progress (or otherwise) of the poor, whether it is societies, families or individuals, is beset with difficulties and controversies surrounding the definition of a poverty line or frontier. Here, borrowing ideas from the mixture model literature, a new...

Economic and social welfare is inherently multidimensional. However, choosing a measure which combines several indicators is difficult and may have unintendend and undesirable effects on the incentives of policy makers. We develop a nonparametric empirical method for deriving welfare rankings...

The most popular general univariate polarization indices for discrete (Esteban and Ray 1994), and continuous (Duclos, Esteban and Ray 2004) variables are combined and extended to describe the extent of polarization between agents in a distribution defined over a collection of many discrete and...

The most popular general univariate polarization indexes for discrete and continuous variables are extended and combined to describe the extent of polarization between agents in a distribution defined over a collection of many discrete and continuous agent characteristics. A formula for the...

This note extends the Duclos Esteban Ray Polarization Measure to situations in which agents are characterized in many dimensions where the characteristics are both discrete and continuous. It provides a formula for its asymptotic variance and illustrates its use in an application to a sample of...

This paper examines the determinants of city growth in China. Evidence is provided that economic reforms played an important role in accelerating urban growth. The relative magnitude of the state sector has a negative impact on city growth and the city's openness to foreign direct investment has...

In the late 1970s China embarked upon a period of wide-ranging reforms, amongst which the Economic Reforms and the Open Door Policy can be counted. This article is to investigate ensuing patterns and trends in the interCity per-capita income distribution in China in the 1990s, after the reforms...

The notion of Equality of Opportunity (EO) has pervaded much of economic and social justice policy over the last half century in conveying a sense of liberation from the circumstances that constrain an individual’s ability to achieve it, and it has been a cornerstone of many gender equality...

An important issue in both welfare and development economics is the interaction between institutions and economic outcomes. While welfarists are typically concerned with how these variables contribute to overall wellbeing, empirical assessments of their joint contribution are limited....

Economic and social welfare is inherently multidimensional. However, choosing a measure which combines several indicators is difficult and may have unintendend and undesirable effects on the incentives of policy makers. We develop a nonparametric empirical method for deriving welfare rankings...