An approach to the centre-focus problem for homogeneous perturbations
proposed by Cherkas yields a transformation to periodic Abel equations
of degree 3. In this paper we consider both the polynomial and period
ic Abel equations of any degree. We define the Bautin ideal for these
two classes of Abel equations. Recently an approach based on the use o
f a 1-parameter integrating factor allowed to find the successive deri
vatives of the return map for a polynomial system which is a homogeneo
us perturbation of the rotation at the origin. We present the same typ
e of results for the Abel equations. For the polynomial Abel equations
, we show that there is an integrating factor defined by a convergent
series expansion with polynomial coefficients which satisfy a simple l
inear recurrency relation. We solve this recurrency relation for low d
egrees of the perturbation and compute the Bautin index. We then use o
ur previous findings based on the Bernstein inequality and Bautin inde
x to bound the number of complex periodic solutions on a neighbourhood
of prescribed size. For the periodic Abel equations, we show that the
existence of the integrating factor is equivalent to the periodicity
of all other orbits.