Ramses H. Abul Naga

Ramses H. Abul Naga
University of Aberdeen | ABDN · Business School and Health Economics Research Unit

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35
Publications
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376
Citations

Publications

Publications (35)
Preprint
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The median-preserving spread (MPS) ordering for ordinal variables (Allison and Foster, 2004) has become ubiquitous in the inequality literature. We devise statistical tests of the hypothesis that a distribution G is not an MPS of a distribution F. Rejecting this hypothesis enables the conclusion that G is more unequal than F according to the MPS cr...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we examine the Lorenz ordering when the number of pay states is finite, as is most often the case in public sector employment. We characterize the majorization set: the set of pay scales such that some distribution u is more egalitarian than another distribution v, with u and v being two distributions of a given sum total. We show tha...
Article
An inequality index over p dimensions of well-being is decomposable by attributes if it can expressed as a function of p unidimensional inequality indices and a measure of association between the various dimensions of well-being. We exploit this decomposition framework to derive joint hypothesis tests regarding the sources of multidimensional inequ...
Article
Inequality indices for self-assessed health and life satisfaction are typically constructed as functions of the cumulative distribution function. We present a unified methodology for the estimation of the resulting inequality indices. We also obtain explicit standard error formulas in the context of two popular families of inequality indices that h...
Article
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Recent decades have witnessed a rising interest in the measurement of inequality from a multidimensional perspective. This literature has however remained largely theoretical. This chapter presents an empirical application of a recent methodology and in doing so offers practical insights on how multidimensional inequality can be measured over two a...
Article
This paper explores the welfare effects of international subsidies designed to expedite the production of global public goods. It distinguishes between the impact subsidies exert on behaviour and the impact subsidies exert on welfare. Subsidies that encourage recipients to contribute to the provision of global public goods can be designed to maximi...
Article
Developed countries may gain more than developing countries from the provision of a global public good: the greater their valuation of the good, the higher the productivity of developing countries’ contributions and the more developed countries derive satisfaction from altruism.
Article
We use the delta method to derive the large sample distribution of multidimensional inequality indices. We also present a simple method for computing standard errors and obtain explicit formulas in the context of two families of indices.
Article
Full-text available
According to the catastrophic health expenditure methodology a house-hold is in catastrophe if its health out-of-pocket budget share exceeds a critical threshold. We develop a conceptual framework for addressing three questions in relation to this methodology, namely: 1. Can a budget share be informative about the sign of a change in welfare? 2. Is...
Article
Because self-reported health status [SRHS] is an ordered response variable, inequality measurement for SRHS data requires a numerical scale for converting individual responses into a summary statistic. The choice of scale is however problematic, since small variations in the numerical scale may reverse the ordering of a given pair of distributions...
Article
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The OLS estimator of the intergenerational earnings correlation is biased towards zero, while the instrumental variables estimator is biased upwards. The first of these results arises because of measurement error, while the latter rests on the presumption that the education of the parent family is an invalid instrument. We propose a panel data fram...
Article
Taking a benchmark scenario, the current situation in Switzerland, and using a microsimulation technique, we compare the effectiveness of various income maintenance schemes for reducing inequality and poverty. A full negative income tax allowance designed to eliminate poverty is shown to reduce income inequality most drastically. An integrated fede...
Chapter
The catalogue of definitions of poverty appears to be very large and there is little consensus about the appropriate indicator of resources to be adopted (Atkinson, 1989). Clearly, the choice of definition is the starting point of any poverty-related study, and should not be left as a side issue. Furthermore, the definition of resources greatly inf...
Article
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When health status is an ordered response variable, Allison and Foster (2004)postulate that a distribution Q ?exhibits more inequality than a distribution P ?if Q ?isobtained from P ?via a sequence of median preserving spreads. This paper introduces aparametric family of inequality indices which are founded on the Allison and Fosterordering.
Article
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We provide, for the class of relative bidimensional inequality indices, adecomposition of inequality into two univariate Atkinson-Kolm-Senindices and a third statistic which depends on the joint distribution ofresources.
Article
We provide, for the class of relative bidimensional inequality indices, a decomposition of inequality into two univariate Atkinson- Kolm-Sen indices and a third statistic which depends on the joint distribution of resources.
Article
Life-cycle theories emphasize the fact that consumption is allocated intertemporally, on the basis of a long-term concept of resources that differs from household income. Because life-cycle income is unobserved, the distribution of this variable cannot be recovered. It is shown that, within a suitably defined class, a predictor of life-cycle income...
Article
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By limiting the scope for substitution between commodities, other things equal quantity constraints raise the cost of living. Thus, rationed families have higher povery lines than unconstrained ones. This heterogeneity in both resources and poverty lines means that, in principle, bivariate dominance results are required to order distributions in te...
Article
The paper examines the effects of environmental uncertainty on Pigouvian tax and abatement policy used, either separately or contemporaneously, to counteract pollution. We discuss uncertainty in three aspects: environmental quality, pollution effect and the impact of abatement. For each case we determine the conditions ensuring that uncertainty inc...
Article
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The 'prediction approach' proposed by Dearden, Machin and Reed (DMR) consists in (1) regressing the observed incomes of the child and parent families on separate sets of predetermined variables, and (2) regressing the child's predicted income on that of the parents. Conceptually, this estimator must relate to the 2SLS/IV estimator. We re-derive the...
Article
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We study the evolution of earnings inequality in Switzerland during the recession of the 1990s. We compare the Lorenz curves of the 1992 and 1997 distributions, as well as the related generalised Lorenz curves, given the pay deterioration witnessed during this period. The Lorenz curve is shown to move upward. However, on the basis of the generalise...
Article
Because the permanent incomes of parents and children are typically unobservable, the permanent income of the parent family is taken to be a latent variable, but it is assumed that a model for its determinants is known to the researcher. I propose two related estimators for the intergenerational correlation: a 2SLS procedure and a more efficient MI...
Article
Full-text available
L'�tude de l'�volution de la distribution des salaires sous forme d'analyse de coupes transversales peut manquer de documenter des faits li�s � la mobilit� salariale de certains groupes de travailleurs. Ce travail, bas� sur une �tude en panel, vise � relativiser la stabilit� de la distribution des revenus professionnels pendant la r�cession des ann...
Article
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Averaging methods are routinely used in order to limit biases resulting from the mismeasurement of permanent incomes. The Solon/Zimmerman estimator regresses a single-year measurement of the child's resources on a T-period average of the parents' income while the Behrman/Taubman estimator regresses an S-period average of the child's resources on a...
Article
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We examine whether the spread of an exporting strategy can be characterized as a diffusion process using a general framework that accounts for attrition and changes in the pool of potential adopters and allows the diffusion rate to vary according to firm and market characteristics. Our findings indicate that the diffusion of exporting is described...
Article
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We consider the problem of estimating the intergenerational correlation of incomes in the context of a panel data framework with measurement errors. We present single equation estimation methods as well as system methods under various assumptions regarding the serial correlation of the error term and taking into account possible correlations among...
Article
PIP The persistence of inequalities in income distribution over time is examined using U.S. data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). "U.S. father and son income data extracted from the PSID support the hypothesis that the distribution of earnings of children raised in privileged environments [consistently exceeds] that of children of di...
Article
An emerging literature in the field of income distribution suggests that inequality may persist in the long run. U.S. father and son income data extracted from the PSID support the hypothesis that the distribution of earnings of children raised in privileged environments welfare-dominates that of children of disadvantaged backgrounds. We provide th...
Article
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We contrast two approaches to the prediction of latent variables in the model of factor analysis. The likelihood statistic is a sufficient statistic for the unobservables when sampling arises from the exponential family of distributions. Linear predictors, on the other hand, can be obtained as distribution-free statistics. We provide conditions und...
Article
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This paper is about the determination and prediction of permanent income in household data. Standard static welfare indicators (e.g. per capita expenditure and income) are imperfect in this respect as they typically contain a high transitory component. The framework we employ is consistent with the permanent income hypothesis but is supplemented wi...
Article
Using a US sample of parents and children, we examine income distribution in two generations. We find that the mean of the children's distribution is higher than that of parents', but incomes were more equally distributed in the lower deciles of the latter distribution. Groups of children raised in richer families have higher average incomes and lo...
Article
We consider the problem of targeting benefits when the incomes of families are not accurately observable by the public authorities. By income uncertainty it is meant that the decision-maker cannot ascertain an applicant's income, but that he can assign probabilities with respect to the level of his resources. A decision-theoretic framework is used...
Article
Full-text available
The standard approach to the study of poverty assumes the existence of an ideal variable that captures the extent of deprivation. In this paper we postulate that poverty is involved with many dimensions. We use a latent variable framework to predict the extent of an individual's hardship as a function ?i =ax1i + bx2i +..., where the x's are indicat...
Article
This paper deals with the stability of robust principal components analysis (PCA) defined through robust estimates of the population covariance matrix as M-estimators or the MVE-estimator. The stability is measured by means of an angular measure between sample prinicipal components and population principal components, the latter being obtained by b...

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