Have real median incomes in the U.S. stagnated or achieved modest growth? Answers often vary depending on the price index one uses. Several researchers have argued that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) overstates inflation and understates real income growth. The CPI's approach to estimating...

The variance of the logarithm, often used to test for s-convergence, does not respect the properties expected for an inequality measure and it has problematic implications for world growth. Empirical tests for b-convergence are so weak that b-convergence can be observed simultaneously when one...

"In a relative deprivation framework, unless inequality is reduced, growth is associated with both higher satisfaction and higher deprivation. This may help explain the discontent with growth despite its benefits. As is well known in the literature, knowledge of the population's mean income and...

"In a relative deprivation framework, unless inequality is reduced, growth is associated with both higher satisfaction and higher deprivation. This may help explain the discontent with growth despite its benefits. As is well known in the literature, knowledge of the population's mean income and...

The average of periodic growth rates is a downwardly biased estimator of the rate of growth of a country. The higher the variance of the periodical growth rates, the higher the downward bias. The longer the business cycle, the higher the downward bias. In this short paper, we demonstrate these...

In a relative deprivation framework, unless inequality is reduced, growth is associated with both higher satisfaction and higher deprivation. This may help explain the discontent with growth despite its benefits. Knowledge of the population's mean income and the Lorenz curve is all that is...

This paper proposes a social welfare framework in which to analyze the relationships between growth, trends in inequality, mobility, and social welfare. An application of the framework to worldwide and regional data on per capita GDP suggests a lack of convergence at the world level, opposite...