https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

Econometric policy evaluation: A critique

Economics Of Discrimination

Rural development: putting the last first

By all accounts, income inequality in Egypt is low and had been declining during the decade that preceded the 2011 revolution. As the Egyptian revolution was partly motivated by claims of social injustice and inequalities, this seems at odds with a low level of income inequality. Moreover, while income inequality shows a decline between 2000 and 2009, the World Values Surveys indicate that the aversion to inequality has significantly increased during the same period and for all social groups. This paper utilizes a range of recently developed statistical techniques to assess the true value of income inequality in the presence of a range of possible measurement issues related to top incomes, including item and unit non-response, outliers and extreme observations, and atypical top income distributions. The analysis finds that correcting for unit non-response significantly increases the estimate of inequality by just over 1 percentage point, that the Egyptian distribution of top incomes follows rather closely the Pareto distribution, and that the inverted Pareto coefficient is located around median values when compared with 418 household surveys worldwide. Hence, income inequality in Egypt is confirmed to be low while the distribution of top incomes is not atypical compared with what Pareto had predicted and compared with other countries in the world. This would suggest that the increased frustration with income inequality voiced by Egyptians and measured by the World Values Surveys is driven by factors other than income inequality.

/pdf/top-incomes-and-the-measurement-of-inequality-in-egypt-l1p0utyjpq.pdf

Top Incomes and the Measurement of Inequality in Egypt

Empirical distributions of top incomes suffer from statistical problems affecting the measurement of inequality and its trend. Researchers and practitioners have been increasingly noting parametric regularities across income distributions and turning to parametric functions to approximate or supplement the observed distributions, both for descriptive purposes and for correcting distributional statistics derived from data. The proliferation of distinct branches of modeling literature has highlighted the need to compare the alternative modeling options, and develop systematic tools to discriminate between them. This paper reviews the state of methodological and empirical knowledge regarding the adoptable parametric functions, and lists references and statistical programs allowing practitioners to apply these models to microdata in household surveys and administrative registers, or grouped‐records data from national accounts statistics. Implications for modeling the distributions of other economic outcomes including consumption and wealth, and incomes below the topmost tail, are drawn. For incomes, a handful of distribution functions hold promise for modeling the top tails based on theoretical and empirical properties—namely the extreme values distributions, the generalized Pareto, the Singh–Maddala and the generalized beta type 2. Understanding these functions in relation to other commonly invoked alternatives is a contribution of this review.

Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection

It is sometimes observed and frequently assumed that top incomes in household surveys worldwide are poorly measured and that this problem biases the measurement of income inequality. This paper tests this assumption and compares the performance of reweighting and replacing methods designed to correct inequality measures for top-income biases generated by data issues such as unit or item non-response. Results for the European Union’s Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey indicate that survey response probabilities are negatively associated with income and bias the measurement of inequality downward. Correcting for this bias with reweighting, the Gini coefficient for Europe is revised upwards by 3.7 percentage points. Similar results are reached with replacing of top incomes using values from the Pareto distribution when the cut point for the analysis is below the 95th percentile. For higher cut points, results with replacing are inconsistent suggesting that popular parametric distributions do not mimic real data well at the very top of the income distribution.

/pdf/top-incomes-and-inequality-measurement-a-comparative-a3sszf154k.pdf

Top Incomes and Inequality Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Correction Methods Using the EU SILC Data

Introductions of nonindigenous organisms into the United States have been linked to international trade. The individual contributions of imports, immigration, and international travel, however, are poorly understood because introduction dates are unavailable. We examine relationships between economic trends and discoveries of nonindegenous insects and use these relationships to infer the timing and determinants of introductions. We find that a few variables can explain much variation in species introductions and identifications. The most significant contributor to the introduction appears to be agricultural imports. Currently available proxies for academic effort are weak determinants of the probability that introduced species are identified.

/pdf/economic-determinants-of-invasion-and-discovery-of-47f6echozw.pdf

Economic determinants of invasion and discovery of nonindigenous insects.

The paper re-estimates the Gini inequality index for the United States using the Current Population Survey between 1979 and 2014 and two alternative correction methods for top income biases. Top incomes in household surveys are affected by a variety of biases related to survey design, income measurement and post-survey data adjustments. The paper corrects for selected biases using a stochastic approach based on reweighting and a semi-parametric approach based on replacing observations. Both methodologies show that income inequality in the United States has been consistently underestimated during the period considered. The level of underestimation is up to 6.83 percentage points depending on the year considered, choice of correction method and choice of modalities within methods. The degree of underestimation is positively and significantly associated with mean income, non-response rates, the initial level of inequality and the degree of departure of the top incomes distribution from a Pareto distribution.

Vladimir Hlasny

Papers

Top Incomes and the Measurement of Inequality in Egypt

Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection

Top Incomes and Inequality Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Correction Methods Using the EU SILC Data

Economic determinants of invasion and discovery of nonindigenous insects.

The impact of top incomes biases on the measurement of inequality in the United States