Over the last 2 decades the distribution of private household expenditures has become more unequal in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, with the Gini coefficient rising from 0.311 to 0.364, even though absolute poverty incidence has halved. The increase in inequality was statistically...

In view of rising concerns over increasing inequality in the European Union since the financial crisis, this study provides an inequality decomposition of the overall European income distribution by country. The EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions are our empirical basis. Inequality...

Recent debate has suggested that growing levels or high levels of inequality may be systematically associated with the occurrence of banking crises. Using the updated version of the Chartbook of Economic Inequality, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the 'level' hypothesis and...

Since November 2014, the population's real disposable money income have been steadily on the decline. Data for January – September 2015 point to a rising poverty rate. In 2015, the share of personal income spent on commodities and services hit its record low of the past 16 years. The share of...

Consumers have benefited from decades of technological improvement in electronics, yet the distribution of their welfare gains are unexamined, despite interest in other measures of inequality. In this paper, I examine the welfare gains to different income cohorts from the development of multiple...

There remains a debate about the true level of wealth inequality in the UK, but the trends do not conform to the story of unprecendented or spiralling inequality that are frequently implied in the media. Wealth inequality recently widened for the first time in a decade. However, this was...

In this paper we compute inequality measures over the distribution of a subjective well-being variable constructed from a life satisfaction question included in the Gallup World Poll in almost all countries in the world. We argue that inequality in subjective well-being may be a better proxy for...

Over the past two decades consumption inequality has risen within Laos, while absolute poverty incidence halved. The estimated Gini coefficient of private household expenditures per person rose from 0.311 to 0.364. This increase in the sample-based estimate of inequality was statistically...

Empirical studies have shown that preferences for redistribution are sig- nificantly correlated with expectations of future mobility and the belief that society offers equal opportunities. We add to previous research by inves- tigating the role of individual and social norms on rent seeking. We...

In Austria, the share of foreign currency mortgages in total household debt has been increasing since the late 1990s. Today about one-third of household credit debt is denominated in foreign currency, mostly in Swiss francs. A major issue with regard to the resulting implications for financial...