A major problem encountered in studies of income inequality at regional and global levels is the estimation of income distributions from data that are in a summary form. In this paper we estimate national and regional income distributions within a general framework that relaxes the assumption of...

The Lorenz curve relates the cumulative proportion of income to the cumulative proportion of population. When a particular functional form of the Lorenz curve is specified it is typically estimated by linear or nonlinear least squares, estimation techniques that have good properties when the...

Various inequality and social welfare measures often depend heavily on the choice of a distribution of income. Picking a distribution that best fits the data in some sense involves throwing away information and does not allow for the fact that, by chance, a wrong choice can be made. It also does...

The nature of global and regional income distributions and the extent of inequality are examined using country-level data on income distributions drawn from World Bank studies and the World Institute for Development Economics Research for the period 1993 - 2000. Beta-2 income distributions are...

This paper examines the nature and extent of global and regional income distribution and inequality using the most recent country level data on income distribution drawn from World Bank and UNU-WIDER studies for the period 1993-2000. The methodology used is a recently developed technique to fit...

This paper examines the nature and extent of global and regional income distribution and inequality using the most recent country level data on income distribution drawn from World Bank and UNU-WIDER studies for the period 1993-2000. The methodology used is a recently developed technique to fit...

A large number of functional forms have been suggested in the literature for estimating Lorenz curves that describe the relationship between income and population shares. One way of choosing a particular functional form is to pick the one that best fits the data in some sense. Another approach,...