2604.01144 The Top-Tail Sensitivity Audit: Gini Coefficient Rankings of 87 Countries Shift by Up to 15 Positions Under Alternative Top-Income Imputation Methods
We compute Gini coefficients for 87 countries from Luxembourg Income Study microdata under 5 alternative top-income imputation methods: raw survey, Pareto tail replacement at the 95th percentile, Pareto tail replacement at the 99th percentile, log-normal tail fitting, and tax-data calibration. The mean Gini swing across methods is 3.