As the political situation in Greece continues to deteriorate, we decided to take a look at the income distribution statistics we have for the country. Take a look at the graph we created based on World Bank numbers:
The graph shows the income share for each quintile of the population. The top 20% has a 41.49% share of income, while the bottom 20% has a 6.74% share.
Note that all income share numbers are from the year 2000. We have not been able to locate more recent data, although the CIA World Factbook publishes GINI index numbers which are more recent.
It will be interesting to see how the distribution of income in Greece changes once the effect of the current crisis is quantified.
After the financial crisis of the recent years, there are countries that have fared better than others, due in part to a transfer of capital from financial markets in developed countries to emerging market economies.
To identify the winners and losers, economists Ignacio Munyo and Ernesto Talvi calculated a Global Index of Economic Exuberance where the winners are Argentina, Angola, and Brazil, and the losers are Hungary, the United States, and Kazakhstan.
CERES: Center for the Study of Economic and Social Affairs
I just finished uploading January 2009 data to the historical commodity prices section. I noticed right away that the sharp fall of all commodity price indices that started in July 2008 seems to have stopped sometime between December of last year and January of this year. Take a look at the overall Commodity Price Index for example.
One data point does not a trend make, but January 2009 looks a lot better to commodity producers than December 2008.
One final note: February 2009 data will be available in approximately 30 days. I follow the IMF release schedule, which is not fixed.
Vox is a wonderful web site I found today full of interesting analysis and comments by some of the World’s top economists. I was happy to see that my alma matter is very well represented by Olivier Blanchard, Giuseppe Bertola, Jeffrey Frankel, and others.
If you are paying particular attention to the explosive rise of commodity prices (see graph below), take a few minutes to read the articles written by Guillermo Calvo – Exploding commodity prices, lax monetary policy, and sovereign wealth funds – and by Jeffrey Frankel – An Explanation for Soaring Commodity Prices. They both suggest that commodity prices are not increasing simply because of soaring demand from China, India, and other fast-growing economies.