Search results for "INEQUALITY"
showing 10 items of 1076 documents
Understanding Economic Growth in Ghana in Comparative Perspective
2019
Ghana has experienced a decade of solid and exceptionally high growth. Between 2005 and 2015, income nearly doubled. This paper analyzes the factors driving this impressive growth performance, using tools such as structural change decompositions and growth regressions. For the comparative perspective, the paper compares Ghana with its structural and aspirational peers. The paper finds that the contribution of structural change to growth has been limited and attributes this to labor that was freed up in agriculture not being absorbed by high-productivity sectors. Looking at factors that drove growth since 2000, financial development and infrastructure had the most important impacts. A benchm…
Observer-based control design for a class of nonlinear systems subject to unknown inputs: LMI approach
2015
This paper deals with the problem of observer-based controller design for a class of nonlinear systems subject to unknown inputs. A novel method is presented to design a controller using estimated state variables which guarantees all the state variables of the closed-loop system converge to the vicinity of the origin and stay there forever. This is done via satisfying several sufficient conditions in terms of nonlinear matrix inequalities. In light of linear algebra, particularly matrix decompositions, the achieved conditions will be converted to a Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) problem to facilitate the procedure of computing the observer and controller gains. Finally, the effectiveness of…
A Unified Approach to Likelihood Inference on Stochastic Orderings in a Nonparametric Context
1998
Abstract For data in a two-way contingency table with ordered margins, we consider various hypotheses of stochastic orders among the conditional distributions considered by rows and show that each is equivalent to requiring that an invertible transformation of the vectors of conditional row probabilities satisfies an appropriate set of linear inequalities. This leads to the construction of a general algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation under multinomial sampling and provides a simple framework for deriving the asymptotic distribution of log-likelihood ratio tests. The usual stochastic ordering and the so called uniform and likelihood ratio orderings are considered as special cases. I…
Regional Inequalities in Consumption Patterns: A Multilevel Approach to the Case of Italy
2007
Summary The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the disparities in the Italian regions on the demand side. In more detail, an attempt will be made to find if the consumption behaviour of Italian households is different in the regions. With this in mind, Istat's 2000 Italian Family Budget data set was analysed. The data in question, which were collected through a two-stage sample over Italy's 20 regions, contains information regarding the expenses of approximately 23,000 households. In this analysis, both households and regions are considered as units: households are nested in the regions so that the basic data structure is hierarchical. In order to take this hierarchical structure into ac…
Interest rate gaps in an uncertain global context: why "too" low (high) for "so" long?
2022
We study the behaviour of real interest rate gaps-i.e. periods of real interest rates above (below) the natural interest rate-and link their length with a set of key observable determinants. Using quarterly data for 13 OECD countries over (close to) the last 60 years, we find that global risk-taking, CPI inflation, (un)conventional monetary policy, and income redistribution crucially shape the duration of both events. However, while labour-related supply-side factors appear to affect the length of positive interest rate gaps, the adoption of an inflation targeting regime and the current account balance seem to explain the duration of negative interest rate gaps. Our results suggest that the…
Sharp dimension free quantitative estimates for the Gaussian isoperimetric inequality
2017
We provide a full quantitative version of the Gaussian isoperimetric inequality: the difference between the Gaussian perimeter of a given set and a half-space with the same mass controls the gap between the norms of the corresponding barycenters. In particular, it controls the Gaussian measure of the symmetric difference between the set and the half-space oriented so to have the barycenter in the same direction of the set. Our estimate is independent of the dimension, sharp on the decay rate with respect to the gap and with optimal dependence on the mass.
How fair is an equitable distribution?
2006
Envy is a rather complex and irrational emotion. In general, it is very difficult to obtain a measure of this feeling, but in an economical context envy becomes an observable which can be measured. When various individuals compare their possessions, envy arises due to the inequality of their different allocations of commodities and different preferences. In this paper we show that an equitable distribution of goods does not guarantee a state of fairness between agents and in general that envy cannot be controlled by tuning the distribution of goods.
Latvia: Both Sides of the Economic Recovery Success Story
2016
Latvian social policy is close to the neoliberal model of the welfare state based on macroeconomic indicators of low welfare state spending, high income inequality, low minimum wage and low degree of decommodification. Latvia was among the first countries to be stung by the crisis in 2008. Key words became: austerity, fiscal consolidation and structural adjustment measures. A minimum social safety network was introduced to improve targeted social support. Funding from the European Social Fund was instrumental in mitigating unemployment, facilitating a large temporary works programme. Latvia joined the Euro zone in 2014 and is quite successfully returning loans. Such is one side of the succe…
Quasiadditivity of Variational Capacity
2013
We study the quasiadditivity property (a version of superadditivity with a multiplicative constant) of variational capacity in metric spaces with respect to Whitney type covers. We characterize this property in terms of a Mazya type capacity condition, and also explore the close relation between quasiadditivity and Hardy's inequality.
Mapping 123 million neonatal, infant and child deaths between 2000 and 2017
2019
Since 2000, many countries have achieved considerable success in improving child survival, but localized progress remains unclear. To inform efforts towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.2—to end preventable child deaths by 2030—we need consistently estimated data at the subnational level regarding child mortality rates and trends. Here we quantified, for the period 2000–2017, the subnational variation in mortality rates and number of deaths of neonates, infants and children under 5 years of age within 99 low- and middle-income countries using a geostatistical survival model. We estimated that 32% of children under 5 in these countries lived in districts that had attained ra…