A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic and Human Development

This book contributes to the empirical literature on economic and human development from five different perspectives: the first chapter provides a new statistical test for bimodality of densities with an application to income data. The second chapter analyzes the worlds cross-country distribution of income and challenges the so called Twin Peaks-claim. The third chapter focuses on the world income distribution and resulting implications for poverty reduction, pro-poor growth and the evolution of global inequality. The fourth chapter estimates the welfare effects of recently negotiated Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and African countries. Finally, the fifth chapter investigates whether democracy leads to higher levels of health and education.

Autorentext
The Author: Sebastian Vollmer, born in Stadtoldendorf in 1980, studied Mathematics and Economics at the University of Göttingen and Colorado College, Colorado Springs (USA). Between 2006 and 2009 he was a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Economics at the University of Göttingen and completed the Ph.D. Program Applied Statistics and Empirical Methods of the Center for Statistics at the University of Göttingen. During this time he also worked as a consultant to the World Bank's World Development Report 2009. Presently, the author is conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Hannover and Harvard University.

Inhalt
Contents: A Likelihood Ratio Test for Bimodality in Two-Component Mixtures Twin Peaks or Three Components? Income Distribution Dynamcis and Pro-Poor Growth EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements Political Institutions and Human Development.