Monday, August 21, 2017

SDGs and income inequality

The new global targets for development, the Sustainabe Development Goals, do not consider income inequality although the SDGs pay some lip service. This new and exciting edited volume published by Edward Elgar provides an overview of the state of the art, including the often forgotten issue of how to measure progress regarding a more inclusive development of Earth

Friday, August 4, 2017

earnings inequality 1970-2015



OLLE HAMMAR, Uppsala University - Department of Economics, Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
Email: olle.hammar@nek.uu.se
DANIEL WALDENSTRÖM,
Uppsala University - Department of Economics, Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
Email: daniel.waldenstrom@nek.uu.se

We estimate trends in global earnings dispersion across occupational groups using a new database covering 66 developed and developing countries between 1970 and 2015. Our main finding is that global earnings inequality has declined, primarily during the 2000s, when the global Gini coefficient dropped nearly 10 points and the earnings share of the world's poorest half doubled. Decomposition analyses emphasize the role of income convergence between poor and rich countries and that earnings have become more similar within occupations in traded industries. Sensitivity checks show that the results are robust to varying real exchange rates, inequality measures and population definitions.

Book pp. 67-71

Global factors and inflation


"Global Inflation: The Role of Food, Housing and Energy Prices"

     ECB Working Paper No. 2024

 

  Contact:  MILES PARKER

              Reserve Bank of New Zealand



 


 

ABSTRACT: This paper studies the role of global factors in causing common movements in consumer price inflation, with particular focus on the food, housing and energy sub-indices. It uses a comprehensive dataset of 223 countries and territories collected from national and international sources. Global factors explain a large share of the variance of national inflation rates for advanced countries ─ and more generally those with greater GDP per capita, financial development and central bank transparency ─ but not for middle and low income countries.

Common factors explain a large share of the variance in food and energy prices.

Book, pp. 29-32

Global data shadow economy 1991-2015



LEANDRO MEDINA, George Washington University - Department of Economics, International Monetary Fund (IMF) - Western Hemisphere Department
Email: leandrom@gwu.edu
FRIEDRICH SCHNEIDER,
Johannes Kepler University Linz - Department of Economics, CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research), Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Email: friedrich.schneider@jku.at

Using the MIMIC method, this paper is a first attempt to estimate the size of the shadow economy of 158 countries over the period 1991 up to 2015. In addition to performing a variety of robustness tests, this paper explicitly addresses endogeneity concerns to the use of GDP as cause and indicator, by using the light intensity approach as an indicator variable as proxy for the size of the economy. Results suggest that the average size of the shadow economy of these 158 countries over 1991-2015 is 32.5% of official GDP, which was 34.82% in 1991 and decreased to 30.66% in 2015.

Book p. 21