Upward and downward bias when measuring inequality of opportunity

Paolo Brunori, Vito Peragine and Laura Serlenga ()

No 406, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: We show that, when measuring inequality of opportunity with survey data, scholars incur two types of biases. A well-known downward-bias, due to partial observability of circumstances that affect individual outcome, and an upward bias, which depends on the econometric method used and the quality of the available data. We suggest a simple criterion to balance between the two sources of bias based on cross validation. An empirical application, based on 26 European countries, shows the usefulness of our method.

Keywords: inequality of opportunity; model selection; variance-bias trade-off. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C52 D3 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Upward and downward bias when measuring inequality of opportunity (2019)
Working Paper: Upward and Downward Bias When Measuring Inequality of Opportunity (2018)
Working Paper: Upward and downward bias when measuring inequality of opportunity (2017)
Working Paper: Upward and downward bias when measuring inequality of opportunity (2016)
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