Home
 The Committee
 Working Papers
 Concepts Award
 Newsletter
 Les Intraduisibles
 Bibliography
 Join Us
 Related Sites

Political Concepts
A Working Paper Series of the Committee on Concepts and Methods

Ross E. Burkhart, "Inequality Data and Explanations of Democracy," January 2010
Abstract
It is appropriate to take stock of extant measures of income inequality as they pertain to their utility in cross-national models of political and economic performance. Are some measures more reliable and valid than others? What about data coverage, conceptual mapping of similar indicators, functional form specification matters? This paper specifies models of cross-national democratic and economic performance, with common, industry-standard variables such as economic growth and development level, globalization, political culture (colonialism, ethnicity, religion), and economic type (world-system), and insert various measures of income inequality (Hoover, Deininger and Squire, Galbraith, and UNU-WIDER). The intent is to compare and contrast model robustness under conditions of variable country coverage, inequality definitions, and measurement strategies. With both practical and conceptual matters in mind, the hope is to become better acquainted with the consequences of variable choice in income inequality data usage and modeling techniques.




CIDE IPSA
C&M
The Committee on Concepts and Methods
International Political Science Association (IPSA)
Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE)
Carretera Mexico-Toluca 3655
Col. Lomas de Santa Fe
CP 01210 Mexico, DF
Mexico
Phone +52/55/5727-9800
Copyright (c) 2005 Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas.
All rights reserved.

Credits