IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/halshs-01115996.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Statistical Methods for Distributional Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Frank A. Cowell

    () (STICERD - LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science)

  • Emmanuel Flachaire

    (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales)

Abstract

This Chapter is about the techniques, formal and informal, that are commonly used to give quantitative answers in the field of distributional analysis - covering subjects including inequality, poverty and the modelling of income distributions. It deals with parametric and non-parametric approaches and the way in which imperfections in data may be handled in practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank A. Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2014. "Statistical Methods for Distributional Analysis," Working Papers halshs-01115996, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01115996
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01115996
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01115996/document
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 1997. "Statistical Inference for the Measurement of the Incidence of Taxes and Transfers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1453-1466, November.
    2. DiNardo, John & Fortin, Nicole M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1996. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1001-1044, September.
    3. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2013. "Testing for Restricted Stochastic Dominance," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 84-125, January.
    4. Jianqing Fan & Tsz Ho Yim, 2004. "A crossvalidation method for estimating conditional densities," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 91(4), pages 819-834, December.
    5. Bishop, John A. & Chakraborti, S. & Thistle, Paul D., 1988. "Large sample tests for absolute Lorenz dominance," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 291-294.
    6. Bishop, John A & Formby, John P & Thistle, Paul D, 1992. "Convergence of the South and Non-South Income Distributions, 1969-1979," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 262-272, March.
    7. Russell Davidson, 2012. "Statistical inference in the presence of heavy tails," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 15(1), pages 31-53, February.
    8. Russell Davidson & James MacKinnon, 2000. "Bootstrap tests: how many bootstraps?," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 55-68.
    9. Atkinson, A B, 1987. "On the Measurement of Poverty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(4), pages 749-764, July.
    10. Valentino Dardanoni & Antonio Forcina, 1999. "Inference for Lorenz curve orderings," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 2(1), pages 49-75.
    11. Cowell, Frank A & Victoria-Feser, Maria-Pia, 1996. "Robustness Properties of Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(1), pages 77-101, January.
    12. Frank A. Cowell & Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, 2002. "Welfare Rankings in the Presence of Contaminated Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 1221-1233, May.
    13. Garry F. Barrett & Stephen G. Donald, 2003. "Consistent Tests for Stochastic Dominance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 71-104, January.
    14. Russell Davidson, 2009. "Testing for Restricted Stochastic Dominance: Some Further Results," Review of Economic Analysis, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, vol. 1(1), pages 34-59, September.
    15. Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2009. "Using The P90-P10 Index To Measure U.S. Inequality Trends With Current Population Survey Data: A View From Inside The Census Bureau Vaults," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(1), pages 166-185, March.
    16. Cowell, Frank A., 1991. "Grouping bounds for inequality measures under alternative informational assumptions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1-2), pages 1-14.
    17. Wen-Hao Chen & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2011. "Testing for poverty dominance: an application to Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(3), pages 781-803, August.
    18. Frank A. Cowell & Russell Davidson & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2015. "Goodness of Fit: An Axiomatic Approach," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1), pages 54-67, January.
    19. Garry F. Barrett & Stephen G. Donald & Debopam Bhattacharya, 2014. "Consistent Nonparametric Tests for Lorenz Dominance," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 1-13, January.
    20. Dufour, Jean-Marie, 2006. "Monte Carlo tests with nuisance parameters: A general approach to finite-sample inference and nonstandard asymptotics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 443-477, August.
    21. Davidson, Russell & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2007. "Asymptotic and bootstrap inference for inequality and poverty measures," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 141-166, November.
    22. Davidson, Russell, 2009. "Reliable inference for the Gini index," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 30-40, May.
    23. Cowell, F.A., 2000. "Measurement of inequality," Handbook of Income Distribution,in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 87-166 Elsevier.
    24. François Bourguignon & Christian Morrisson, 2002. "Inequality Among World Citizens: 1820-1992," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 727-744, September.
    25. Frank Cowell & Carlo Fiorio, 2011. "Inequality decompositions—a reconciliation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 509-528, December.
    26. Cowell, Frank A. & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2007. "Income distribution and inequality measurement: The problem of extreme values," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1044-1072, December.
    27. Beach, Charles M & Richmond, James, 1985. "Joint Confidence Intervals for Income Shares and Lorenz Curves," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 26(2), pages 439-450, June.
    28. Russell Davidson, 2010. "Innis Lecture: Inference on income distributions," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1122-1148, November.
    29. Facundo Alvaredo & Emmanuel Saez, 2009. "Income and Wealth Concentration in Spain from a Historical and Fiscal Perspective," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(5), pages 1140-1167, September.
    30. Butler, Richard J. & McDonald, James B., 1989. "Using incomplete moments to measure inequality," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 109-119, September.
    31. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2000. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1435-1464, November.
    32. Bishop, John A & Formby, John P & Smith, W James, 1991. "Lorenz Dominance and Welfare: Changes in the U.S. Distribution of Income, 1967-1986," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(1), pages 134-139, February.
    33. Cowell, Frank A. & Victoria-Feser, Maria-Pia, 2006. "Distributional Dominance With Trimmed Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 24, pages 291-300, July.
    34. Martin Biewen & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2006. "Variance Estimation for Generalized Entropy and Atkinson Inequality Indices: the Complex Survey Data Case," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 68(3), pages 371-383, June.
    35. Barrett, Garry F. & Donald, Stephen G., 2009. "Statistical Inference with Generalized Gini Indices of Inequality, Poverty, and Welfare," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 1-17.
    36. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Melissa S. Kearney, 2008. "Trends in U.S. Wage Inequality: Revising the Revisionists," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 300-323, May.
    37. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Feng, Shuaizhang & Larrimore, Jeff, 2010. "Improving imputations of top incomes in the public-use current population survey by using both cell-means and variances," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 69-72, July.
    38. Bhattacharya, Debopam, 2007. "Inference on inequality from household survey data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 674-707, April.
    39. Cowell, Frank A. & Victoria-Feser, Maria-Pia, 1996. "Poverty measurement with contaminated data: A robust approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1761-1771, December.
    40. Yves G. Berger & Chris J. Skinner, 2003. "Variance estimation for a low income proportion," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 52(4), pages 457-468.
    41. Anderson, Gordon, 1996. "Nonparametric Tests of Stochastic Dominance in Income Distributions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1183-1193, September.
    42. Frank Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire & Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, 2013. "Reference distributions and inequality measurement," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(4), pages 421-437, December.
    43. John Dagsvik & Zhiyang Jia & Bjørn Vatne & Weizhen Zhu, 2013. "Is the Pareto–Lévy law a good representation of income distributions?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 719-737, April.
    44. Frank Cowell & Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, 2003. "Distribution-Free Inference for Welfare Indices under Complete and Incomplete Information," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(3), pages 191-219, December.
    45. Bishop, John A & Formby, John P & Zheng, Buhong, 1997. "Statistical Inference and the Sen Index of Poverty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(2), pages 381-387, May.
    46. Mary C. Daly & Amy D. Crews & Richard V. Burkhauser, 1997. "A new look at the distributional effects of economic growth during the 1980s: a comparative study of the United States and Germany," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 18-31.
    47. Stephen G. Donald & Yu‐Chin Hsu & Garry F. Barrett, 2012. "Incorporating covariates in the measurement of welfare and inequality: methods and applications," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 15(1), pages 1-30, February.
    48. Cowell, Frank A., 1989. "Sampling variance and decomposable inequality measures," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 27-41, September.
    49. Bishop, John A & Formby, John P & Smith, W James, 1991. "International Comparisons of Income Inequality: Tests for Lorenz Dominance across Nine Countries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 58(232), pages 461-477, November.
    50. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    51. Frank Cowell & Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, 2007. "Robust stochastic dominance: A semi-parametric approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(1), pages 21-37, April.
    52. Charles M. Beach & Russell Davidson, 1983. "Distribution-Free Statistical Inference with Lorenz Curves and Income Shares," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 723-735.
    53. Ahamada, Ibrahim & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2010. "Non-Parametric Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199578009.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Engelhardt, Carina & Wagener, Andreas, 2017. "The income distribution of voters: a case study from Germany," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-586, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    2. Oancea, Bogdan & Andrei, Tudorel & Pirjol, Dan, 2017. "Income inequality in Romania: The exponential-Pareto distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 486-498.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    confidence intervals; bootstrap; influence function; hypothesis testing; welfare indices; inequality measure; poverty measure; dominance criteria; non-parametric methods; goodness of fit; parametric modelling;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:wpaper:halshs-01115996. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (CCSD). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.