On the Evaluation of Economic Mobility

Peter Gottschalk and Enrico Spolaore

The Review of Economic Studies, 2002, vol. 69, issue 1, 191-208

Abstract: This paper presents a framework for the evaluation and measurement of “reversal” and “origin independence” as separate aspects of economic mobility. We show that evaluation depends on aversion to multi-period inequality, aversion to inter-temporal fluctuations, and aversion to future risk. We construct “extended Atkinson indices” that allow us to quantify the relative impact of reversal and origin independence on welfare. We apply our approach to the comparison of income mobility in Germany and in the U.S.. When aversion to inequality is the only consideration, the U.S. gains more from mobility than Germany. This reflects similar gains from reversal in the two countries but greater gains in the U.S. from origin independence. The introduction of aversion to intertemporal fluctuations and aversion to future risk makes the impact of mobility in the two countries more similar. Copyright 2002, Wiley-Blackwell.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (121)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-937X.00203 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Evaluation of Economic Mobility (2001)
Working Paper: On the Evaluation of Economic Mobility (2001)
Working Paper: On the Evaluation of Economic Mobility (2000)
Working Paper: On the Evaluation of Economic Mobility (1998)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:69:y:2002:i:1:p:191-208

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().