The effect of the distribution of political rights on income inequality has been studied both theoretically and empirically. The authors review the existing literature and, in particular, the available empirical evidence. The literature suggests that formal exclusion from the political process...

Economic development necessarily changes the welfare of socioeconomic groups to various degrees, depending on differences in their social arrangements. The challenge for policymakers is to select the changes that will be most socially desirable. The author demonstrates the usefulness of...

The author uses date from the 1992-93 and 1997-98 Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS) to describe patterns of money transfers between households. Rapid economic growth during the 1990s did little to diminish the importance of private transfers in Vietnam. Private transfers are large and...

The effects of globalization on income distribution in rich and poor countries are a matter of controversy. While international trade theory in its most abstract formulation implies that increased trade and foreign investment should make income distribution more equal in poor countries and less...

Has the expansion of wage employment in Vietnam exacerbated social inequalities, despite its contribution to income growth? Gallup uses the two rounds of the Vietnamese Living Standards Survey (VLSS) to evaluate the contribution of wage employment to inequality and income growth over the period...

Real GDP and oil prices are decomposed into common stochastic trend and cycle processes using structural time series models. Potential real GDP is represented by the level of the trend component of real GDP. The potential rate of growth of real GDP is represented by the stochastic drift element...

The authors develop a microeconometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, they also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for conditional distributions of education, fertility,...