This study examines empirically the impact of income polarization on economic growth in an unbalanced panel of more than 70 countries during the 1960-2005 period. We calculate various polarization indices using existing micro-level datasets, as well as datasets reconstructed from grouped data on...

This chapter addresses the important issue of the quality of time series data on income distribution. We hope to suggest both standards and practice patterns that will improve the production and use of time series data on inequality. Thus, we address three groups: primary data producers;...

Advanced industrial democracies experience increasing inequalities or at least a new trade-off between equality and growth: liberal welfare states opted for growth and accepted rising inequality, while conservative welfare states tried to hold back inequality, thereby accepting lower growth, and...

The paper investigates the effectiveness of the median voter as a decisive agent in the process of redistribution. According to the previous literature, it tests several assumptions finding interesting results: The positive relation between inequality and redistribution is confirmed, but the...

The reformulation of the median voter hypothesis and its testing proposed in Milanovic (2000) has been criticized from four different perspectives. The critiques are discussed and assessed.

Based on the standard axiom of individual utility maximization, rational choice has postulated that higher income inequality translates into greater redistribution by shaping the median voter's preferences. While numerous papers have tested this proposition, the literature has remained divided...

We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study in order to quantify the economy-wide monetary gains achieved by household-size economies due to within-household sharing of goods by individuals living in multimember households. In most countries out of the twenty countries we examine, we observe a...

The paper uses a veil of ignorance approach and income distribution data of developed countries to arrive at inequality corrected income rankings. While a risk neutral individual (based on year 2000 data) would have preferred to be born into the US rather than any European country in our sample...

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and economic growth in 18 LIS countries. They begin with a discussion of the fact that issues of conceptual and statistical comparability are essential to the understanding and measurement of the growth-equality relationship and their...

Using year-by-year measures of income distribution provided by the LIS dataset for eight continental Europe countries, this paper considers the recent literature on income inequality and growth to test the following propositions: does inequality converge during the process of economic growth?...