This paper presents series on top shares of income and wealth in Spain using personal income and wealth tax return statistics. Top income shares are highest in the 1930s, fall sharply during the first decade of the Franco dictatorship, then remain stable and low till the 1980s, and have increased since the mid 1990s. The top 0.01% income share in Spain estimated from income tax data is comparab...

Inequality, Transfers and Growth: New Evidence from the Economic Transition in Poland This paper analyzes the evolution of inequality in Poland during the economic transition that began in 1989-90. Using micro data from the Household Budget Surveys, we find that, after a brief spike in 1989, income and consumption inequality actually declined to below pretransition levels during 1990-92 and the...

The recent focus on ‘pro-poor growth’ led also to an intense debate on how exactly to define and to measure pro-poor growth. However, all suggested measures, irrespective whether they use the absolute or the relative definition of pro-poor growth have in common that they are based on the anonymity axiom, i.e. they do not distinguish between changes in horizontal and vertical inequality. That me...

This thesis aims to shed light on the determinants of bilateral trade flows across countries. Following the ideas of Linder, a demand-side approach is being taken next to the prevailing trade theories analysing trade from a supply-side perspective. Recent theoretical works predict patterns of trade in which southern countries export mostly to northern countries and northern countries to a broad...

Using the censuses of 2000 and 2010, we have noticed that the inequality of the household per capita income in the biggest Brazilian cities did not show a trend of reduction, differently from the whole country. Also, the inequality in those cities is substantially higher than the Brazilian. We investigate the determinants of this high and persistent inequality for Brasília (Federal District). W...

Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in Urban China, 1986-2000 Although urban China has experienced spectacular income growth over the last two decades, increases in inequality, reduction in social welfare provision, deregulation of grain prices, and increases in income uncertainty in the 1990s have increased urban poverty. Using a large repeated cross-section household survey data from 1986 to 2000...

This paper analyzes the impact of an exogenous change in household incomes in a migrant’s sending country on migration duration, the incidence of repeat migration and migrant selection. Higher incomes raise the opportunity cost of residing abroad, but also help facilitate a costly migration if households are borrowing constrained. To disentangle these mechanisms and to evaluate the effects of i...