Working Paper
A new inequality estimate for urban India?
This paper applies a novel inequality estimation method to household consumption expenditure in Mumbai, India. Since the richest households may be missing in survey data, this re-estimated inequality figure takes them into account by combining survey...
Working Paper
The effect of top incomes on inequality in South Africa
South Africa exhibits extreme levels of income inequality and is ranked as one of the most unequal countries in the world. In order to measure these severe levels of inequality, it matters how we account for the different parts of the income...
Working Paper
A macroeconomic perspective on Asian development
Macroeconomic strategies and policies have differed significantly among Asian countries over the last fifty years, and yet some common issues recur despite their immense diversity in inherited historical initial conditions, differences in political...
Journal Article
Promoting education under distortionary taxation
A common claim in the policy discourse is that a government wishing to achieve equality of opportunity should use public provision of education for equalisation of opportunities rather than income taxation, which only equalizes incomes. We develop a...
Journal Article
Snakes and ladders and loaded dice
Longitudinal surveys allow us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage determine present material welfare and economic upward or downward mobility over time. In this paper, we use five waves of panel data to empirically assess the extent and...
Working Paper
Inequality and voting in fragile countries
The political consequences of economic inequality have been debated in academic and policy circles for centuries. The nature of this relationship seems highly dependent on specific contexts, with empirical studies showing mixed evidence on how...
Working Paper
On the political and social consequences of economic inequality
This paper investigates the impact of inequality on individual civic engagement at the community level, whether this impact persists over time, and what mechanisms may shape the relationship between inequality and civic engagement. The results show...
Research Brief
A game of snakes and ladders with loaded dice
South Africa is often cited as the most unequal economy in the world. Its experience of having to overcome both colonialism and apartheid makes it unique from the vantage of studies on socioeconomic class, economic mobility, and poverty — with...
Working Paper
Promoting education under distortionary taxation
How does the public provision of education and the deployment of distortionary tax and subsidy instruments differ when the government’s objective is conventional welfarist compared to when the objective is the non-welfarist one of equality of...
Working Paper
Financing the Zambia social cash transfer scale-up
This paper assesses the effects on poverty and inequality of the alternative targeting approaches that Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer programme could take as its expansion continues during the period of the country’s Seventh National Development Plan...
Working Paper
Snakes and ladders and loaded dice
Longitudinal surveys can give insight into economic mobility, which allows us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage are consequential in determining material conditions in the present, and how these markers structure economic opportunity over...
Working Paper
The effect of real exchange rate volatility on income distribution in South Africa
This study investigates the effect of real exchange rate volatility on the distribution of income between labour and capital in South Africa. Both symmetric and asymmetric effects are considered. Using quarterly data for 1985:1–2018:3 and local...
Working Paper
Inequality in India
This paper contributes to the literature by reviewing levels, trends, and structure of inequality since the early 1990s in India. It draws extensively on the existing literature, supplemented with analyses of multiple data sources, to paint a picture...