Generalized Recentered Influence Function Regressions

Abstract

This paper suggests a generalization of covariate shifts to study distributional impacts on inequality and distributional measures. It builds on the recentered influence function (RIF) regression method, originally designed for location shifts in covariates, and extends it to general policy interventions, such as location–scale or asymmetric interventions. Numerical simulations for the Gini, Theil, and Atkinson indexes demonstrate strong performance across a myriad of cases and distributional measures. An empirical application examining changes in Mincerian equations is presented to illustrate the method.