IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v33y2009i3p381-404.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On data: a case study of the evolution of income inequality across time and across countries

Author

Listed:
  • A. B. Atkinson
  • A. Brandolini

Abstract

This paper takes income distribution as a case study of the role of data in economics. After describing the transformation which has taken place with regard to the availability of data on income inequality, it discusses how the comparability of these estimates is brought into question by differences in methodology that cannot be eliminated by simple adjustments. Recent analyses of the relationships between income inequality and growth or globalisation are shown to be based on time series plagued by discontinuities which can seriously affect regression results. The paper concludes by calling for greater attention to data quality in applied economics. Copyright The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • A. B. Atkinson & A. Brandolini, 2009. "On data: a case study of the evolution of income inequality across time and across countries," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 33(3), pages 381-404, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:33:y:2009:i:3:p:381-404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bel013
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    More about this item

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. On data: a case study of the evolution of income inequality across time and across countries (CambJE 2009) in ReplicationWiki

    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:oup:cambje:v:33:y:2009:i:3:p:381-404. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    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.