Mobility of workers involves flows of labour, human capital and other production factors and thus contributes to a more efficient allocation of resources. Besides these effects on allocative efficiency, migrant flows affect relative wages and also change the international and national...

This paper seeks to explain the significant variations in the social contract observed across nations. It shows how countries with similar technologies and preferences, as well as equally democratic political systems, can sustain very different average and marginal tax rates. Similarly, it...

This paper surveys major empirical regularities concerning changes in earnings inequality in Europe and the US over the past 25 years. Next, it indicates which of these regularities can be explained within the competitive demand-supply framework of analysis and what is left unexplained. Finally,...

This paper studies cross-country patterns of economic growth from the viewpoint of income distribution dynamics. Such a perspective raises new empirical and theoretical issues in growth analysis: the profound empirical regularity is an ‘emerging twin peaks’ in the cross-sectional...

This paper analyses the relationship between technological progress, intergenerational earnings mobility, and economic growth. The analysis demonstrates that the interplay between technological progress and two components that determine individual earnings – parental human capital and...

This paper studies the impact of income inequality on fiscal conservatism when an increase in inequality affects the bottom portion of income distribution. It is argued that, contrary to what is generally assumed in the economic literature, inequality will then be associated with less, rather...

This paper considers the distributional consequences of the reform programme in Russia. Although a small fraction of the population have gained under the reforms, average real household per capita income has declined significantly with households at the lower end of the income distribution...