IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/globdv/v7y2016i2p18n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hidden Inequality: How Much Difference Would Adjustment for Illicit Financial Flows Make to National Income Distributions?

Author

Listed:
  • Cobham Alex

    (Tax Justice Network and King’s College, London, United Kingdom)

  • Davis William
  • Ibrahim Gamal

    (UN Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

  • Sumner Andy

    (King’s College London, London, United Kingdom)

Abstract

A recent innovation in measuring inequality is the incorporation of adjustments to top incomes using data from tax authorities, revealing higher inequality. The thesis of this paper is that the incorporation of estimates of income from illicit financial flows (IFF), reflecting untaxed capital, may be as significant to national inequality – but with greater variation across countries. We propose a method of adjusting national inequality data for illicit flows, and present preliminary results. These estimates suggest that untaxed illicit flows could be as important as (taxed) top incomes to estimates of inequality – highlighting the importance of improving estimates of underlying illicit flows.

Suggested Citation

  • Cobham Alex & Davis William & Ibrahim Gamal & Sumner Andy, 2016. "Hidden Inequality: How Much Difference Would Adjustment for Illicit Financial Flows Make to National Income Distributions?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-18, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:globdv:v:7:y:2016:i:2:p:18:n:2
    DOI: 10.1515/jgd-2016-0022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jgd-2016-0022
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jgd-2016-0022?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    2. Christoph Lakner & Branko Milanovic, 2016. "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 203-232.
    3. Niels Johannesen & Jukka Pirttilä, 2016. "Capital flight and development: An overview of concepts, methods, and data sources," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-95, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Carr-Hill, Roy, 2013. "Missing Millions and Measuring Development Progress," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 30-44.
    5. Nitsch, Volker, 2016. "Trillion dollar estimate: Illicit financial flows from developing countries," Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics 227, Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics.
    6. Alex Cobham & Andrew Sumner, 2013. "Is it all about the tails? The Palma measure of income inequality," Working Papers 308, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Gabriel Zucman, 2013. "The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. net Debtors or net Creditors?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 1321-1364.
    8. Alex Cobham, Andy Sumner, 2013. "Is It All About the Tails? The Palma Measure of Income Inequality-Working Paper 343," Working Papers 343, Center for Global Development.
    9. Cobham, Alex & Janský, Petr, 2015. "Measuring Misalignment: the Location of US Multinationals’ Economic Activity Versus the Location of their Profits," Working Papers 11202, Institute of Development Studies, International Centre for Tax and Development.
    10. Palma, J.G., 2011. "Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it's all about," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1111, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    11. Niels Johannesen & Jukka Pirttilä, 2016. "Capital flight and development: An overview of concepts, methods, and data sources," WIDER Working Paper Series 095, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Alex Cobham & Lukas Schlögl & Andy Sumner, 2016. "Inequality and the Tails: the Palma Proposition and Ratio," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 7(1), pages 25-36, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Cobham & Luke Schlogl & Andy Sumner, 2015. "Inequality and the Tails: The Palma Proposition and Ratio Revisited," Working Papers 143, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    2. Alstadsæter, Annette & Johannesen, Niels & Zucman, Gabriel, 2018. "Who owns the wealth in tax havens? Macro evidence and implications for global inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 89-100.
    3. Alex Cobham & Lukas Schlögl & Andy Sumner, 2016. "Inequality and the Tails: the Palma Proposition and Ratio," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 7(1), pages 25-36, February.
    4. Salvatore Morelli & Timothy Smeeding & Jeffrey Thompson, 2014. "Post-1970 Trends in Within-Country Inequality and Poverty: Rich and Middle Income Countries," CSEF Working Papers 356, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    5. Paddy Carter & Alex Cobham, 2016. "Are taxes good for your health?," WIDER Working Paper Series 171, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Daniel Dujava & Maria Siranova, 2017. "Getting the Measures of Trade Misinvoicing Right: Bilateral Panel Data Approach," Working Papers wp98, Institute of Economic Research, Slovak Academy of Sciences, revised 20 Dec 2017.
    7. Cárdenas-Retamal, Roberto & Dresdner-Cid, Jorge & Ceballos-Concha, Adams, 2021. "Impact assessment of salmon farming on income distribution in remote coastal areas: The Chilean case," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    8. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman, 2018. "Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 553-609.
    9. Alice Krozer, 2015. "The Inequality We Want: How Much Is Too Much?," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(03), pages 1-27.
    10. Syed Mansoob Murshed & Muhammad Badiuzzaman & Mohammad Habibullah Pulok, 2017. "Fiscal capacity and social protection expenditure in developing nations," WIDER Working Paper Series 060, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Syrovátka, Miroslav & Schlossarek, Martin, 2019. "Measuring development with inequality: How (should) aggregate indicators of development account for inequality?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    12. Channing Arndt & Sam Jones & Vincenzo Salvucci, 2015. "When do relative prices matter for measuring income inequality? The case of food prices in Mozambique," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(3), pages 449-464, September.
    13. Elena Ianchovichina & Lili Mottaghi & Shantayanan Devarajan, "undated". "Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor, October 2015," World Bank Publications - Reports 22711, The World Bank Group.
    14. Valenzuela-Levi, Nicolás, 2021. "The rich and mobility: A new look into the impacts of income inequality on household transport expenditures," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 161-171.
    15. Martin Ravallion, 2022. "Missing Top Income Recipients," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 205-222, March.
    16. Nancy Birdsall & Christian J. Meyer, 2015. "The Median is the Message: A Good Enough Measure of Material Wellbeing and Shared Development Progress," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 6(4), pages 343-357, November.
    17. Thomas Goda & Santiago Sanchez, 2018. "Market and Disposable Top Income Shares adjusted by National Accounts Data," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 26(2), pages 1-22, July.
    18. Paddy Carter & Alex Cobham, 2016. "Are taxes good for your health?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-171, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Niels Johannesen & Jukka Pirttilä, 2016. "Capital flight and development: An overview of concepts, methods, and data sources," WIDER Working Paper Series 095, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Segal, Paul, 2020. "Inequality as entitlements over labour," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104083, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    illicit financial flows; income distribution; income inequality; tax;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:globdv:v:7:y:2016:i:2:p:18:n:2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.