The paper studies how high leverage and crises can arise as a result of changes in the income distribution. Empirically, the periods 1920-1929 and 1983-2007 both exhibited a large increase in the income share of the rich, a large increase in leverage for the remainder, and an eventual financial...

This study examines the scope for redistributive government policies based on progressive income taxation and direct income transfers. We concentrate on the case of Hungary. We first survey recent developments in the economic circumstances of the household sector and changes in the Hungarian...

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...

A trade union whose purpose is to raise wages above the competitive level may foster economic growth if it succeeds in shifting income away from the owners of capital to the workers and if the workers' marginal propensity to save exceeds that of capitalists. We make this point in an overlapping...

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...

Our focus in this paper is macroeconomic policy in the countries of Central Europe: The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. All four are committed to joining the European Union. Accordingly, their macroeconomic policies need to put them on a credible path towards meeting the entry...

We study the emplyment and distributional effects of regulating (reducing) working time in a general equilibrium model with search-matching frictions. Job creation entails some fixed costs, but existing jobs are subject to diminishing returns. We characterize the equilibrium in the de-regulated...

Value and momentum portfolios exhibit strong opposite signed exposure to an aggregate risk factor based on low frequency fluctuations in the capital share. This strong opposite signed exposure helps explain why both strategies earn high average returns yet are negatively correlated. But the...