Abstract: This paper develops a methodology for nonparametric estimation of a polarization measure due to Anderson Ge and Leo (2006) based on kernel estimation techniques. We give the asymptotic theory of our estimator, which in some cases is non standard due to boundary value problems. We also propose a method for conducting inference based on estimation of unknown quantities in the limiting distribution and show that our method yields consistent inference in all cases we consider. We investigate finite sample proerties of our estimator by simulation methods. We give an application to the study of polarization in China in recent years.
Keywords: kernel estimation, Inequality, Overlap Coefficient, Poissonization.
JEL Classification: C12, C13, C14.