This paper presents a non-median voter model of redistribution in which greater inequality leads to lower redistribution. Bargaining between interest groups and politicians over exemptions implies that individuals with sufficiently high income will not pay taxes in equilibrium. Therefore, voters...

Existing work in growth empirics either assumes linearity of the growth function or attempts to capture non-linearities by the addition of a small number of quadratic or multiplicative interaction terms. Under a more generalized failure of linearity or if the functional form taken by the...

Three apparently contradictory stylized facts characterize the relationship between per capita incomes and life expectancy: (i) the existence of a strong correlation between the level of life expectancy and the level of per capita income, (ii) the absence of a significant correlation between...

This two-volume original reference work provides a comprehensive overview of development economics and comprises contributions by some of the leading scholars working in the field. Authors are drawn from around the world and write on a wide range of topics.

Theory and case-study evidence suggest that non-linearities are pervasive in the growth process. Growth empirics have attempted to characterize these non-linearities with regression trees, additively separable non-parametric estimates, or simple interaction terms. Each method requires specific...

Mark Weisbrot (2008) has claimed that under the Chávez administration in Venezuela the share of pro-poor spending has increased, inequality has declined, poverty has fallen rapidly, and there has been a massive reduction in illiteracy. All of these conclusions are based on the use of heavily...

This paper presents a new empirical strategy for estimating the effects of trade policy on domestic factor prices when policy endogeneity is suspected. Absent income effectson factor supplies or domestic prices, the coefficient on the terms of trade can provide an unbiased estimator of the...