Ravi Kanbur, T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, presented the LIS Summer Lecture: Predistribution vs Redistribution.

Ravi Kanbur researches and teaches in development economics, public economics and economic theory. He is well known for his role in policy analysis and engagement in international development. He has served on the senior staff of the WB including as Chief Economist for Africa. He has also published in the leading economics journals, including Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory and Economic Journal.

Research Director
  philippe.vankerm@uni.lu
bio

LIS is pleased to announce the appointment of Philippe Van Kerm as new LIS Research Director starting from June 2024. Philippe will support LIS Director Peter Lanjouw in leading the scientific programme with a view to further expand the LIS activities to facilitate, promote, and conduct cross-national comparative research. Philippe is an economist and a professor in inequality and social policy analysis at the University of Luxembourg’s Department of Social Sciences. He has a vast experience in micro-data analysis on poverty and inequality.

Besides publishing numerous research in peer-reviewed journals, he has been developing software tools that are widely used worldwide for inequality, poverty and welfare analysis. He is well acquainted with the LIS infrastructure and has regularly been teaching poverty and inequality analysis and advanced quantitative methods at the University of Luxembourg and at the LIS Summer Workshop. Philippe’s proven experience in research in inequality and poverty, together with his long-standing knowledge of LIS, will undoubtedly help him advance LIS’ mission and achieve further growth in the future. LIS welcomes him warmly!

by Vito De Sandi, (University of Bari)

This article proposes a new framework for evaluating income inequality by integrating three normative principles: equality of opportunity, sufficientarianism, and limitarianism. The author argues that these principles can be effectively combined to assess unfair inequality. For practical application Luxembourg’s income distribution is analysed.

Full article is available here.

by Petra Sauer, (University of Fribourg, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), Luxembourg Institute for Socio-economic Research (LISER))

Comparatively, Austria is one of the countries with the lowest levels of tertiary education in advanced countries. This article provides a snapshot how tertiary education degrees in Austria expanded over time. In a second step, it analyses how the higher education premium by gender has evolved over time.

Full article is available here.

by Jörg Neugschwender, (LIS)

This article is a follow-up of the previous article, Analyzing the Impact of Social Protection Programs in a Cross-national Perspective (Issue 29, March 2024). By using the concept of an international poverty line the author showcases the effectiveness of social protection systems in poverty prevention over time. The article concludes with a discussion about the limitations of the methodology and the need for powerful interactive visualization tools to analyse poverty patterns in a cross-national context.

Full article is available here.

To enhance and simplify the use of the LIS databases through the LISSY user interface, the LIS team has developed a new R function, lissyuse(), for easy and efficient data loading.

The `lissyuse()’ function allows LISSY R-users to quickly import entire series of data within the LIS/LWS databases for specific countries and/or time periods. It also automatically merges household-level databases with individual-level ones based on user-selected variables, if needed. For more information about the function and its options, please see here.

This R function operates similarly to the Stata lissyuse command, which the LIS team developed for Stata users to easily merge and append datasets within the LIS/LWS/ERFLIS databases. For full documentation of the Stata-lissyuse command, please see here.

For feedback and questions regarding the lissyuse command and functionality, please contact usersupport@lisdatacenter.org.

This year’s winner of the LIS Aldi Award is Itay Machtei (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) for the LIS Working Paper No. 854 entitled “Testing Theories of Redistribution: Structure of Inequality, Electoral Institutions, and Partisan Politics” co-written with Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens.

The winning paper underwent a rigorous evaluation process, with six reviewers assessing its merits, and it was unanimously voted as the best among the qualified LIS and LWS Working papers. Every year, the award is granted to the writer under age 40 whose LIS or LWS Working Paper from the previous year best demonstrates the qualities of good scholarship that Aldi exhibited.

Itay will be presenting the winning paper at the upcoming LIS Summer Workshop.

LIS is happy to announce the following data updates:

• Colombia (1 new LIS dataset) – Addition of CO23 to the LIS Database
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  One new dataset from Colombia has been added to the LIS Database (CO23). The new dataset is based on the Great Integrated Household Survey / Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares (GEIH) carried out by the National Administrative Department of Statistics / Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE). Please note that starting from CO22 the GEIH is based on the latest 2018 Census (henceforth referred to as GEIH-M18) implying a new methodology in terms of sampling, weighting and the collection of several labour market and income items.
• France (2 new LIS datasets) – Addition of FR19 and FR20 to the LIS Database
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  LIS has added two more data points,FR19 and FR20 to the LIS Database. The datasets are from the Tax and Social Incomes Survey (ERFS) carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE).
• Luxembourg (2 new LIS datasets) – Addition of LU20 and LU21 to the LIS Database
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  Two new datasets from Luxembourg have been added to the LIS Database, LU20 and LU21 . The data are based on the Socio-economic Panel “Living in Luxembourg” / Panel socio-économique “Liewen zu Letzebuerg“ (PSELL III), from which is also created the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The data are provided by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (STATEC). Yet again, LIS is grateful for the invaluable help and support offered by STATEC to prepare the data.
• Serbia (12 new LIS datasets and 4 revised) – Annualisation from RS06 to RS22 in the LIS Database
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  LIS has annualised the Serbian data series from RS06 to RS22. All datasets are based on the Household Budget Survey carried out by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia. The previously available datasets RS06/RS10/RS13/RS16 have been slightly reworked for consistency, to a large extent in the education section and to a lesser extent in the incomes and consumption sections. The LIS Key Figures changed moderately.