Journal on Policy & Complex Systems Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 58

Heed the Weakest Link : A Model of Interdependent Institutions
Table 3 . Marginal benefits of improving specific institutions
Ease of entry ( wrt entry costs )
Absence of corruption
Efficiency of credit markets
Efficiency of labor market
Business performance
x 1
x 2
x 3
x 4
HI
HI
HI
LO
difficult
0.9
0.9
0.9
0.1
0.0729
Marginal effects : 0.081
0.081
0.081
0.729
Figure 1 . The world income distribution : kernel density based on our elaboration on IMF data for the year 2009 ( Epanechnikov kernel , bandwidths shown ).
4 . The Empirical Distribution of GDP Per Capita

Is the lognormal distribution a good

approximation for the distribution of world GDP per capita ? Lee ,
3 See http :// www . imf . org / external / pubs / ft / weo / 2010 / 01 / weodata .
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Amaral , Canning , Meyer , and Stanley ( 1998 ) provide some tentative evidence in favor of a lognormal . In Figure 1 , we see a kernel density of the distribution of ( log of ) GDP per capita , based on IMF data for 181 countries in 2009 . 3