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.