We investigate the long term determinants of political and economic outcomes over a new data set composed of Mississippi counties. We analyze the effect of disfranchisement on voting registration at the end of the nineteenth century (1896-9), as well as the impact of voting registration on...

This paper evaluates the prospects for income tax reform in China during the coming decade (with a comparison to India), and argues that such reforms should rank high on the policy agenda in these two countries. Due to high average income growth and sharply rising top income shares during the...

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...

The objective of this research is to document and to explain trends in inequality in 20th century France. Data from income tax returns (1915-98), wage tax returns (1919-98) and inheritance tax returns (1902-94), is used in order to compute fully homogeneous, yearly estimates of income...

We analyse how, in representative democracies, income distribution influences the stringency of environmental policy and economic growth. Individuals (who differ in abilities) live for two periods, working when young and owning capital when old. Externalities are caused by a polluting factor....

This Paper starts from the result of Rochet (1989), that with distortionary income taxes social insurance is a desirable redistributive device when risk and ability are negatively correlated. This finding is re-examined when ex post moral hazard and adverse selection are included, and under...