We study the recent evolution of top incomes in Switzerland, analyzing both social security data on labor incomes and tax data on total income. The results show that in the last 20 years, the share of top incomes has risen, and the top 0.01 percent’s share even doubled, putting Switzerland...

This paper documents the magnitude, pattern, and evolution of lifetime earnings inequality in Germany. Based on a large sample of earnings biographies from social security records, we show that the intra-generational distribution of lifetime earnings of male workers has a Gini coefficient around...

Disposable income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient and using Family Budget Survey data, increased very little, and by a similar amount, from 1989–93 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This surprising result is examined with an analysis of changes in the channels of...

We analyze the distribution and concentration of market incomes in Germany in the period 1992 to 2001 on the basis of an integrated data set of individual tax returns and the German Socio-Economic Panel. The unique feature of this integrated data set is that it encompasses the whole spectrum of...

In this article we quantify the aggregate, distributional and welfare consequences of two revenue neutral flat-tax reforms using a model economy that replicates the U.S. distributions of earnings, income and wealth in very much detail. We find that the less progressive reform brings about a 2.4%...

We study the link between culturally inherited household structure and wealth distribution in international comparisons using household data for the US and Spain (the SCF and the EFF). We estimate counterfactual US distributions relying on the Spanish household structure. Our results show that...

The aim of this paper is to isolate and measure the respective importance of political and economic aspects in two critical episodes of the French inter-war period: the stabilization process of the mid-1920s and the reluctance to abandon the gold standard during the 1930s. We do this by...

In recent years, venture capital has increasingly become a factor in the financing of new firms. We examine how the value of mature firms determines the incentives of entrepreneurs to start up new firms and of venture capitalists to finance and advise them. We examine how capital gains taxes as...

This paper analyses the changes to the tax and social security systems that have occurred since Czechoslovakia's `velvet revolution' in 1989. It shows how the tax system is moving to meet the requirements of a market economy. It suggests that a particularly high priority has to be given to...

This paper considers optimal educational investment and labour supply with increasing returns to scale in the earnings function In so doing we develop the work of Rosen (1983), who first highlighted the increasing returns argument that arises because private returns to human capital investment...