Documents Morelli, Salvatore 2 results

"Recent debate has suggested that growing levels or high levels of inequality may be systematically associated with the occurrence of banking crises. Using the updated version of the Chartbook of Economic Inequality, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the `level' hypothesis and reassesses the empirical validity of the `growth' hypothesis. In line with previous work, the empirical analysis on the entire set of countries and years under investigation does not provide any conclusive and compelling statistical support to either of the hypotheses. However, the apparent statistical insignificance of the findings does not rule out the economic relevance of the question at hand, given that the hypotheses cannot be rejected for important crises and countries such as the US and the UK. Hence, the overall evidence is far from being conclusive and there are several reasons to shed further light on this important research topic."

"The purpose of this Chartbook is to present a summary of evidence about long-run changes in economic inequality – primarily income, earnings, and wealth – for 25 countries covering more than one hundred years. There is a range of countries and they account for more than a third of the world's population: Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. The results are presented in 25 charts, one for each country, together with a description of the sources. The underlying figures are available for download at www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com."