Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/67050 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Citation: 
[Journal:] Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal [ISSN:] 1864-6042 [Volume:] 6 [Issue:] 2012-42 [Publisher:] Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) [Place:] Kiel [Year:] 2012 [Pages:] 1-44
Publisher: 
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel
Abstract: 
Aphorisms that 'rising tides raise all boats' or that material advances of the rich eventually 'trickle down' to the poor are really maxims regarding the nature of stochastic processes that underlay the income/wellbeing paths of groups of individuals. This paper looks at the implications for the empirical analysis of wellbeing of conventional assumptions regarding such processes which are employed by both micro and macro economists in modeling economic behavior. The implications of attributing different processes to different groups in society following the club convergence literature are also discussed. Various forms of poverty, inequality, polarization and income mobility structures are considered and much of the conventional wisdom afforded us by such aphorisms is questioned. To exemplify these ideas the results are applied to the distribution of GDP per capita in the continent of Africa.
Subjects: 
stochastic processes
poverty
inequality
wellbeing measurement
JEL: 
C22
I32
D63
D91
O47
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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