The paper uses the recently available data on growth rates, democracy, protectionism, and wars over the period 1820 to 2000 to look at the determinants of economic growth over the long-term. It is motivated by the following questions: what is the effect of democracy on growth, was colonialism...

Using the large nationally-representative Malaysian Household Income Surveys from 1984, 1989 and 1997, the paper studies earnings inequality and determinants of earnings. During the period 1984-97, Malaysia's real per capita GDP increased by about 70 percent, participation rates for both men and...

Using recent economic statistics from the peak period of Byzantine political and economic influence, we estimate the average income around the year 1000 to have been about 6 nomismata per capita per annum. This is then translated into current prices using two independent methods. They both yield...

The effect of the distribution of political rights on income inequality has been studied both theoretically and empirically. This paper reviews the existing literature and, in particular, the available empirical evidence. Our reading of the literature suggests that formal exclusion from the...

This note is motivated by recent arguments made by Martin Feldstein in which the relevance of inequality is dismissed (if everybody's income goes up, who cares if inequality is up too?), and the argument is made that only poverty alleviation should matter. This note shows that we all do care...

When income is redistributed at national level, the minimum requirement is that the transfers should be progressive, that is flow from richer to poorer individuals. The same rule should hold at the global level: it is not sufficient that transfers be from a richer to a poorer country. But...

Using household surveys from Yemen and Djibouti, the paper analyses determinants of qat consumptions in two countries. The results confirm huge importance of qat in daily life: with between one-half (in Djibouti) and 70% (in Yemen) of all households reporting at least one user. But in Yemen, qat...

New data derived directly from household surveys are used to examine the effects of globalization on income distribution in poor and rich countries. The article looks at the impact of openness and of direct foreign investment on relative income shares across the entire income distribution. It...

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty provides a unified theory of the functioning of the capitalist economy by linking theories of economic growth and functional and personal income distributions. It argues, based on the long-run historical data series, that the forces of...

Suppose that all people in the world are allocated only two characteristics over which they have (almost) no control: country of residence and income distribution within that country. Assume further that there is no migration. We show that more than one-half of variability in income of world...