This paper develops a proxy measure of the inequality of influence on the basis of survey evidence from 2002 Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted among 6,500 firms in 27 transition countries. We refer to the resulting inequality as crony bias in the political...

This paper provides an empirical test of the Engerman–Sokoloff hypothesis that factor endowments influenced the development of the rule of law, which in turn has perpetuated income inequality. Using a measure of the suitability of land for growing wheat relative to sugarcane as an instrument...

We consider 134 countries during the period 1984-2019 and find a significant positive relation between Rule of Law (law and order provided by police and courts, respect for private property rights) and GDP per capita. Notably, this positive relation is getting stronger with time. This positive...

Why can some governments credibly commit to the rule of law and protection of property rights while others cannot? A potential answer involves deep historical traditions of institutions that constrain rulers. We explore whether experiences with representative assemblies in medieval/early modern...

Ambiguous impacts of financial development on income inequality in the literature imply that the impacts can be affected by other variables and may depend on different dimensions of financial development. This paper studies the effects of financial development with multi-dimensional analysis...

It is well known that people’s consumption patterns change with income. Relative price changes therefore affect rich and poor consumers differently. Yet, the standard price indices are not income-specific and hence, the use of these mask these differences in cost-of-living. In this paper, we...

The paper continues the author's work on a general theory for the aggregation of prices and quantities in relation to the money metric. The focus here is on the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs). It is shown that the measures that are currently being produced are seriously defective....

We examine the extent to which self-reported health measures suffer from reporting bias and then characterize how this reporting bias affects the estimation of income-related health inequality as measured by the concentration index. We run a comprehensive set of tests of reporting bias using...