Cross-national variation in income inequality and its determinants: an application of Bayesian model averaging on a new standardized inequality data set
2015
Abstract
This paper focuses on the cross-national variation in income inequality and examines its determinants. We review available sources of data and compile a new standardized data set covering the most recent figures on income inequality for 147 countries.
We overview existing literature offering a large number of sometimes competing theoretical explanations for cross-national variation in inequality and specify the measurable variables for our analysis. Based on these departures, the main goal of the empirical analysis is to compare the aggregate relevance of these alternative explanations one against the other.