With reference to the Baumol/de Long controversy over the importance of the sample selection when verifying the convergence hypothesis, the paper concludes that the convergence results are conditioned by the joint consideration of the United States and Japan in the same country sample. The...

In the literature there are a number of generalizations of the Gini coefficient which inherit most of its appealing properties. These families allow the incorporation of different value judgments and all of them are more sensitive to transfers among the poorest individuals in society than to...