Gabriel Palma Explained

Gabriel Palma (José Gabriel Palma) is a noted Chilean development economist. He is an emeritus professor at University of Cambridge and a part-time professor at University of Santiago, Chile. He is most noted for his work on dependency theory, the political economy of development in Latin America and income distribution.^{[1] [2]} He is also known for the Palma ratio which is defined as the ratio of the richest 10% of the population's share of gross national income divided by the poorest 40%'s share. This is based on Palma's finding that middle class incomes almost always represent about half of gross national income while the other half is split between the richest 10% and poorest 40%, but that the share of those two groups varies considerably across countries.^{[3] [4] [5] [6]}

Palma gave the 2020 Amartya Sen Lecture, for the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) Conference on What Went Wrong With European Social Democracy: On Building a Debilitating Capitalism, Where Even the Welfare State Subsidises Greater Market Inequality. ^[7]

Selected publications

• Palma, G. (1978). Dependency: a formal theory of underdevelopment or a methodology for the analysis of concrete situations of underdevelopment?. World development, 6(7–8), 881–924.
• Palma, J. G., & Stiglitz, J. E. (2016). Do nations just get the inequality they deserve? The “Palma Ratio” re-examined. In Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy: Volume II: Regions and Regularities (pp. 35–97). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
• Palma, G. (1998). Three and a half cycles of ‘mania, panic, and [asymmetric] crash’: East Asia and Latin America compared. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 22(6), 789–808.
• Palma, J. G. (2011). Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘inverted‐U’: It's all about the share of the rich. Development and Change, 42(1), 87–153.
• Chang, H. J., Palma, G., & Whittaker, D. H. (1998). The Asian crisis: introduction. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 22(6), 649–652.
• Arestis, P., Palma, G., & Sawyer, M. (Eds.). (2005). Capital Controversy, Post Keynesian Economics and the History of Economic Thought: Essays in Honour of Geoff Harcourt, Volume One (Vol. 1). Routledge.

Notes and References

1. https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/emeritus/jgp5
2. https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/jPalma
3. Web site: Palma. José Gabriel. Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the 'Inverted-U': the share of the rich is what it's all about. Cambridge Working Papers in Economics (CWPE) 1111. Cambridge University. 1 May 2024. January 2011.
4. https://uncounted.org/palma/
5. Matthews, Dylan (2013) The global upper class makes 32 times as much as the global lower class, Washington Post, September 26, 2013
6. Web site: Putting the Gini Back in the Bottle? 'The Palma' as a Policy-Relevant Measure of Inequality. https://web.archive.org/web/20130423083249/https://www.kcl.ac.uk/aboutkings/worldwide/initiatives/global/intdev/people/Sumner/Cobham-Sumner-15March2013.pdf. dead. 23 April 2013. King's International Development Institute. King's College London. 14 January 2019. Alex Cobham. Andy Sumner. 1 May 2024.
7. https://hd-ca.org/videos/plenary-4-what-went-wrong-with-european-social-democracy-on-building-a-debilitating-capitalism-where-even-the-welfare-state-subsidises-greater-market-inequality