gini coefficients

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. rosserjb at jmu.edu
Thu Aug 17 12:53:28 PDT 2000


[Apologies if this is a repeat. I goofed in sending an earlier version, so am repeating.]

Have had an offlist discussion with Doug about the gini coefficient list he put out. It is from Branko Milanovic at the World Bank, but disagrees with some numbers that he has published. Mostly these disagreements are minor, but some are very serious. I think that these may involve typos by somebody posting the stuff to Doug.

The two most wacko numbers are for Austria and Georgia. Austria is shown as going from 22.8 to 47.8. No way. I suspect the second number is 27.8.

Georgia is shown as going from 25.3 to 24.3. Again, no way. In his book, _Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economies_ (World Bank, 1998, Washington), Milanovic lists Georgia in 1993 as having a Gini of 56.0, one of the most unequal in the world.

I note that Ginis are hard to calculate and there are many revisions and competing estimates out there. But those kinds of differences are due to errors in reporting to Doug from Branko. Barkley Rosser



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