We study the effect of interview modes on estimates of economic inequality which are based on survey data. We exploit variation in interview modes in the Austrian EU-SILC panel, where between 2007 and 2008 the interview mode was switched from personal interviews to telephone interviews for some but not all participants. We combine methods from the program evaluation literature with methods from...

This study estimates the intergenerational mobility of economic status in Japan from the perspective of international comparison. The intergenerational elasticity of earnings and income of offspring with respect to parental income is estimated using microdata from the 1993—2004 rounds of the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers. The result of instrumental variables estimation suggests intergenera...

This paper investigates the private provision of public goods in segregated societies. While most research agrees that segregation undermines public goods provision the findings are mixed for private provision: social interactions, being strong within groups and limited across groups, may either increase or impede voluntary contributions. Surprisingly, very little light is shed in the literatur...

In this paper we study a behavioral model of conflict that provides a basis for choosing certain indices of dispersion as indicators for conflict. We show that the (equilibrium) level of conflict can be expressed as an (approximate) linear function of the Gini coefficient, the Herfindahl-Hirschman fractionalization index, and a specific measure of polarization due to Esteban and Ray. JEL-Classi...

This paper investigates the source of the gap in the relative wealth position of immigrant households residing in Australia, Germany and the United States. Our results indicate that in Germany and the United States wealth differentials are largely the result of disparity in the educational attainment and demographic composition of the native and immigrant populations, while income differentials...

Inequality, Inequity Aversion, and the Provision of Public Goods We investigate the effects of inequality in wealth on the incentives to contribute to a public good when agents are inequity averse and may differ in ability. We show that equality may lead to a reduction of public good provision below levels generated by purely selfish agents. But introducing inequality motivates more productive ...

This paper is an investigation of the third-degree stochastic dominance order (TSD) which has been introduced in the context of risk analysis and is now receiving an increased attention in the area of inequality measurement. After observing that this partial order fails to satisfy the von Neumann-Morgenstern property in the space of random variables, we introduce strong and local third-degree s...

We consider a model of occupational choice in large economies where individuals differ in their wealth endowment. Individuals can remain self-employed or engage in productive matches with another individual, i.e., form firms. Matches are subject to a moral hazard problem with limited liability. The division of the gains from such matches is determined by competitive forces. When the incentive p...

Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility Families, labor markets, and public policies all structure a child’s opportunities and determine the extent to which adult earnings are related to family background. Cross-country comparisons and the underlying trends suggest that these drivers will most likely lower the degree of intergenerational earnings mobility for ...

This paper critically analyses the strongly subjectivist approach to exploitation theory recently proposed by Matsuo ([7]), in the context of general convex economies with heterogeneous agents. It is proved that the Fundamental Marxian Theorem is not preserved in his subjectivist approach, contrary to Matsuo’s claims, and that no meaningful subjectivist exploitation index can be constructed. It...