The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of “Secondary” Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries as a Case Study
Abstract
This paper examines the role of secondary data-sets in empirical economic research, taking the field of income distribution as a case study. We illustrate problems faced by users of “secondary” statistics, showing how both cross-country comparisons and time-series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data. After describing the genealogy of secondary data-sets on income inequality, we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across OECD countries and over time. The lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data-sets are summarized at the end of the paper.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950-1988
Summers, R., & Heston, A. (1991) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.2307/2937941 · Cited by 3,429
Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries
Barro, R. J. (2000) · Journal of Economic Growth · doi:10.1023/a:1009850119329 · Cited by 2,676
Buhmann, B., Rainwater, L., Schmaus, G., & Smeeding, T. M. (1988) · Review of Income and Wealth · doi:10.1111/j.1475-4991.1988.tb00564.x · Cited by 1,200
Hewitt, C. (1977) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2094750 · Cited by 216
Cited by
Inequality and happiness: are Europeans and Americans different?
Alesina, A., Di Tella, R., & MacCulloch, R. (2004) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.07.006 · Cited by 1,752
Trade Liberalization and Poverty: The Evidence So Far
Winters, L. A., McCulloch, N., & McKay, A. (2004) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/002205104773558056 · Cited by 1,085
Globalization and the Great U-Turn: Income Inequality Trends in 16 OECD Countries
Alderson, A. S., & Nielsen, F. (2002) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/341329 · Cited by 759
Inequality and Growth: What Can the Data Say?
Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2003) · Journal of Economic Growth · doi:10.1023/a:1026205114860 · Cited by 592
Trade and Income Inequality in Developing Countries
Meschi, E., & Vivarelli, M. (2009) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2008.06.002 · Cited by 394
Metadata
- Authors
- Atkinson, A. B., & Brandolini, A.
- Venue
- Journal of Economic Literature
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2001-09-01
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 771-799
- ISSN
- 0022-0515 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2025989004
- Cited by
- 905
- References
- 4
- FWCI
- 138.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of “Secondary” Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries as a Case Study. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1257/jel.39.3.771
- The paper
- Atkinson, A. B., & Brandolini, A. (2001). Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of “Secondary” Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries as a Case Study. Journal of Economic Literature. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.39.3.771
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
