Recently, there has been a resurgence in the interest in the determinants of income inequality across countries. This paper adds to this literature by examining the role of one further explanatory variable: macroeconomic volatility. Using a cross-section of developed and developing countries, we...

This article investigates how financial development is beneficial to the reduction of poverty, on the one hand by promoting growth and on the other hand directly by the McKinnon conduit effect. At the same time, however, financial instability which accompanies financial development is...

The income contribution of child work is undoubtedly a key factor influencing child work and schooling decisions. Yet, few studies have attempted to directly measure this contribution. This is particularly the case for work performed on the household farm, as is the case for the vast majority of...

This paper analyses the factors that give rise to the existence of the informal economy and how it evolves over time.  Using an occupational-choice model the paper shows that at early stages of development, informal and formal markets coexist, but in the long-run the size of the informal...

Previous analyses of the formation and composition of community based organizations (CBOs) have used cross section data.  So, causal inference has been compromised.  We obviate this problem by using data from a quasi-experiment in which villages were formed by government officials selecting...

The paper presents a model where individuals decide to become workers or entrepreneurs in the presence of capital constraints and where individuals differ in wealth levels.  The model shows that the higher the initial level of inequality in wealth is, the lower the long run aggregate wealth of...

Two essential intuitions about the concept of multidimensional inequality have been highlighted in the emerging body of literature on this subject: first, multidimensional inequality should be a function of the uniform inequality of a multivariate distribution of goods or attributes across...

The paper attempts to synthesize the research to date on the contribution of international trade to rising income inequality in the US and to other labour-market developments in other countries. Our basic conclusion is that despite using very different methodologies, on balance most labour and...

Two interesting results are obtained from CASS national household surveys of 1988 and 1995. First, there was a tendency for intra-provincial inequality in both earnings per worker and household income per capita not only to rise in each province but also to converge across provinces. Second,...

The paper analyses two cross-section national household surveys, relating to the years 1988 and 1995, to explain the rise in inequality of income that occured in Chine over those seven years. The Gini coefficient of household income per capita increased from 38 to 45 per cent, i.e. by 1,0...