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Power Law Scaling in the World Income Distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Corrado Di Guilmi

    (Department of Economics - Università Politecnica delle Marche)

  • Mauro Gallegati

    (Department of Economics - Università Politecnica delle Marche)

  • Edoardo Gaffeo

    (Department of Economics - University of Udine)

Abstract

We show that over the period 1960-1997, the range comprised between the 30th and the 85th percentiles of the world income distribution expressed in terms of GDP per capita invariably scales down as a Pareto distribution. Furthermore, the time path of the power law exponent displays a negatively sloped trend. Our findings suggest that the cross-country average growth process appears to be scale invariant but for countries in the tails of the world income distribution, and that the relative volatility of smaller countries' growth processes have increased over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Corrado Di Guilmi & Mauro Gallegati & Edoardo Gaffeo, 2003. "Power Law Scaling in the World Income Distribution," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 15(6), pages 1-7.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-03o40003
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Diego Garlaschelli & Maria I. Loffredo, 2007. "Effects of network topology on wealth distributions," Papers 0711.4710, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2008.
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    6. D. Garlaschelli & T. Di Matteo & T. Aste & G. Caldarelli & M. I. Loffredo, 2007. "Interplay between topology and dynamics in the World Trade Web," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 57(2), pages 159-164, May.
    7. G. Fagiolo & M. Napoletano & A. Roventini, 2007. "How do output growth-rate distributions look like? Some cross-country, time-series evidence," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 57(2), pages 205-211, May.
    8. Bianchi, Carlo & Cirillo, Pasquale & Gallegati, Mauro & Vagliasindi, Pietro A., 2008. "Validation in agent-based models: An investigation on the CATS model," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 947-964, September.
    9. Davide Provenzano, 2017. "On the World Distribution of Income," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(1), pages 189-196, March.
    10. Carlo Bianchi & Pasquale Cirillo & Mauro Gallegati & Pietro Vagliasindi, 2007. "Validating and Calibrating Agent-Based Models: A Case Study," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 30(3), pages 245-264, October.
    11. Rafael González-Val & Marcos Sanso-Navarro, 2010. "Gibrat’s law for countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(4), pages 1371-1389, September.
    12. Alexander M. Petersen & Boris Podobnik & Davor Horvatic & H. Eugene Stanley, 2010. "Scale invariant properties of public debt growth," Papers 1002.2491, arXiv.org.
    13. Hernández-Ramírez, E. & del Castillo-Mussot, M. & Hernández-Casildo, J., 2021. "World per capita gross domestic product measured nominally and across countries with purchasing power parity: Stretched exponential or Boltzmann–Gibbs distribution?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 568(C).
    14. Tomson Ogwang, 2011. "Power laws in top wealth distributions: evidence from Canada," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 473-486, October.
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    16. Blair Fix, 2018. "Hierarchy and the power-law income distribution tail," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 471-491, September.
    17. Andrea Monaco & Matteo Ghio & Adamaria Perrotta, 2024. "Wealth dynamics in a multi-aggregate closed monetary system," Papers 2401.09871, arXiv.org.
    18. Fix, Blair, 2021. "Redistributing Income Through Hierarchy," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 98, pages 58-86.
    19. D'Orazio, Paola, 2019. "Income inequality, consumer debt, and prudential regulation: An agent-based approach to study the emergence of crises and financial instability," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 308-331.
    20. Biggiero, Lucio & Angelini, Pier Paolo, 2015. "Hunting scale-free properties in R&D collaboration networks: Self-organization, power-law and policy issues in the European aerospace research area," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 21-43.
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    Keywords

    Growth;

    JEL classification:

    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
    • E1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models

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