Upward and downward bias when measuring inequality of opportunity

Paolo Brunori, Vito Peragine and Laura Serlenga ()

No 05-2016, SERIES from Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza - Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro"

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: 277
Date: 2016-09, Revised 2016-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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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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