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Do people care about income inequality and does income inequality affect subjective well-being? Welfare theories can predict either a positive or a negative impact of income inequality on subjective well-being and empirical research has found evidence on a positive, negative or non significant relation. This paper attempts to determine some of the possible causes of such empirical heterogeneity. Using a very large sample of world citizens, the author tests the consistency of income inequality in predicting life satisfaction. The analysis finds that income inequality has a negative and significant effect on life satisfaction. This result is robust to changes in regressors and estimation choices and also persists across different income groups and across different types of countries. However, this relation is easily obscured or reversed by multicollinearity generated by the use of country and year fixed effects. This is particularly true if the number of data points for inequality is small, which is a common feature of cross-country or longitudinal studies.

Comparator Countries --- Competitive Environment --- Economic Change --- Economic Theory & Research --- Income --- Inequality --- Poverty Impact Evaluation --- Poverty Monitoring & Analysis --- Public Sector Development --- Services & Transfers to Poor --- World Development Indicators

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This paper proposes a framework to analyze competition in the banking sector using Jordan as an example. In particular, the paper pursues a multi-pronged approach to analyze competition including (i) an examination of the extent to which the market is contestable (that is, has low barriers to bank entry and exit), (b) an evaluation of the behavior of bank spreads, and (iii) an assessment of nonstructural and direct measures of bank competition such as the H-statistic and the Lerner Index. This approach provides a more comprehensive framework to examine competition in the banking sector, compared with the commonly used alternative of looking only at bank concentration figures. In the case of Jordan, the analysis indicates that although concentration has declined, competition in the country is low and has decreased over time.

Access to Finance --- Banks & Banking Reform --- Competitive environment --- Debt Markets --- Economic growth --- Economic performance --- Emerging Markets --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial services --- Market access --- Markets and Market Access

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This paper analyzes the recent evolution and impact of the global economic crisis on the offshore services industry. Using a global value chains framework, the authors classify the offshore services sector in a comprehensive set of general and industry-specific activities that correspond to different segments and stages in the value-adding process for services. Through an analysis of the impact of the economic crisis on the industry, a small decline in demand was found; however this did not cause any structural changes in the market. The crisis has created two opposing effects: general contraction of demand by existing customers due to the recession; and, at the same time, a substitution effect by which new services are being moved from developed countries to emerging economies in search of cost reduction. The paper concludes that the offshore services industry will continue to offer growth opportunities for developing countries not only among existing market players, but also a range of new countries. The industry has the potential to become an important source for employment and economic growth around the globe.

Business associations --- Business intelligence --- Business models --- Business Process Outsourcing --- Business processes --- Business services --- Communication Technology --- Communities and Human Settlements --- Competitive environment --- Computer Science --- Consulting Services --- Content development --- Data Systems --- Decision makers --- Decision-making --- E-Business --- EGovernment --- Engineering services --- Housing & Human Habitats --- ICT Policy and Strategies --- Industry association --- Information and Communication Technologies --- Knowledge economy --- Private Sector Development --- Public Sector Corruption & Anticorruption Measures --- Public Sector Development --- Third-party providers --- Trade statistics --- Water and Industry --- Water Resources