Using Personal Car Register for Measuring Economic Inequality in Countries with a Large Share of Shadow Economy: Evidence for Latvia

Vyacheslav Dombrovsky, Konstantin Kholodilin () and Boriss Siliverstovs

No 1153, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: We suggest to use information from the state register of personal cars as an alternative indicator of economic inequality in countries with a large share of shadow economy. We illustrate our approach using the Latvian pool of personal cars. Our main finding is that the extent of household economic inequality in Latvia is much larger than officially assumed. The latest officially available estimate of the Gini coefficient is 0.36 for 2005, which is much lower than 0.55 for 2009 reported in our paper.

Keywords: Economic inequality; cars; social signaling; Gini index; Latvia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 E26 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 p.
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Using Personal Car Register for Measuring Economic Inequality in Countries with a Large Share of Shadow Economy: Evidence for Latvia (2014)
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