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This paper studies determinants of income inequality using a newly assembled panel of 16 countries over the entire twentieth century. We focus on three groups of income earners: the rich (P99-100), the upper middle class (P90-99), and the rest of the population (P0-90). The results show that...

The objective of this paper is to study the dynamics of the wealth distribution over the path of economic development. More specifically, we are interested in distinguishing between changes which seem to be country specific and characteristics shared by all countries. A historical account of the...

This study presents new homogenous series of top income shares in Sweden over the period 1903–2004. We find that, starting from levels of inequality approximately equal to those in other Western countries at the time, the income share of the Swedish top decile drops sharply over the first...

This paper reviews the long run developments in the distribution of personal income and wealth. It also discusses suggested explanations for the observed patterns. We try to answer questions such as: What do we know, and how do we know, about the distribution of income and wealth over time? Are...

The objective of this essay is to study to what extent parents divide their estates unequally between their children and the determinants of this decision. We use a new dataset based on the estate reports for almost 70,000 Swedish widows, widowers, divorcees and unmarried individuals who died...

In this paper we use newly compiled top income share data to estimate common breaks and trends across countries over the twentieth century. By using the most re-cent structural breaks techniques, our approach both confirms previous notions and offers new insights. In particular, the division...

This paper includes theoretical and empirical analyses of some effects of changes in payroll taxes. First, the implication of the standard partial equilibrium analysis is explored in Section II. In particular, the relationship between statutory and economic incidence are clarified and the...

When a decision-maker’s attention is limited, her decisions depend on what she focuses on. This gives interested parties an incentive to manipulate not only the substance of communication but also the decision-maker’s attention allocation. This paper models such attention manipulation. In...

The search for growth-promoting policies is found to demand knowledge of how growth depends upon actions of entrepreneurs and how these actions depend upon the prevailing institutions. While institutions have extensively been examined for their influences upon the freedoms and the incentives of...