The objective of this paper is to study to what extent parents divide their estates unequally between their children. Unequal sharing of parental transfers is, for example, a necessary condition for theories of altruistic (dynastic) behavior to hold. I use a new data set based on the estate...

This study examines the long-term changes in the distribution of rural income in China from the late 1980s until the mid-2010s. The major findings are summarized as follows. First, contrasting trends are found in the contributions of agricultural income and wage earnings, which reflect the...

The empirical evidence suggests that parents use inter vivos gifts (i.e., transfers of tangible and financial property) to compensate less well off children whereas post mortem bequests are divided equally among siblings. We study a theoretical model assuming, first, that the amounts given is...

This paper re-examines the link between globalization and income inequality. We use data for 140 countries over the period 1970-2014 and employ an IV approach to deal with the endogeneity of globalization measures. We find that the link between globalization and income inequality differs across...

We show how normative standpoints determine optimal taxation of wealth. Since wealth is not equal to capital, we find very different welfare implications of land rent-, bequest- and capital taxation. It is mainly land rents that should be taxed. We develop an overlapping generations model with...

Using survey data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2018, this paper analyzes the relationship between income inequality, group-specific income redistribution, and subjective well-being among China’s urban, rural, and migrant populations. Using narrowly defined reference...

A considerable literature exists on the measurement of income inequality in China and its increasing trend. Much less is known, however, about the driving forces of this trend and their quantitative contributions. Conventional decompositions, by factor components or by population subgroups, only...

This paper investigates the effect of domestic market size on innovation activities across different durable good industries in the Chinese manufacturing sector. We address the endogeneity of market size by an IV strategy, based on a measure of potential market size, which is driven only by...

This introductory chapter provides background to and summarizes key findings from the chapters in this book, all of which share in common their use of household data from the latest round of the China Household Income Project (CHIP) survey to analyze recent trends in inequality in China. We...

In this chapter we examine trends in China's household incomes, income distribution and inequality for China as a whole and for each of the urban, rural and rural-urban migrant subgroups, as well as analyzing changes in the income gaps between the urban and rural sectors and among the...