The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...

We posit that the relationship between income inequality and economic growth ismediated by the level of equality of opportunity, which we identify with intergenerationalmobility. In economies characterized by intergenerational rigidities, an increase in incomeinequality has persistent...

Can a government reduce income inequality by changing the composition of public spending while keeping the total level of expenditure fixed? Using newly assembled data on spending composition for 83 countries across all income groups, this paper shows that reallocating spending toward social...

The purpose of this paper is to compare pension schemes with respect to their intergenerational redistributive effects caused by economic and demographic changes. It is shown how these effects depend on the specific design of the pension scheme, with special attention devoted to the indexation...

The empirical evidence on the existence of social preferences-or lack thereof-is predominantly based on student samples. Yet, knowledge about whether these findings can be extended to the general population is still scarce. In this paper, we compare the distribution of social preferences in a...

The empirical evidence on the existence of social preferences-or lack thereof-is predominantly based on student samples. Yet, knowledge about whether these findings can be extended to the general population is still scarce. In this paper, we compare the distribution of social preferences in a...

This paper analyzes how changing the expected length of intellectual property right (IPR) protection affects growth and the welfare of rich and poor consumers. The analysis is based on a product-variety model with non-homothetic preferences and endogenous markups in which, in accordance with...

This paper analyzes how changing the expected length of intellectual property (IP) protection affects economic growth and the welfare of rich and poor consumers. The analysis is based on a product-variety model with non-homothetic preferences and endogenous markups in which, in accordance with...

We combine state-level fiscal data with household survey data to assess the links between sub-national fiscal policy and income inequality in Brazil over the period 1995-2011. The results indicate that a tighter fiscal stance at the sub-national level is not associated with a deterioration in...

This paper presents new results on the relationship between income inequality and education expansion-that is, increasing average years of schooling and reducing inequality of schooling. When dynamic panel estimation techniques are used to address issues of persistence and endogeneity, we find a...