This paper examines the role of bequests and of taxation on bequests for the distribution of wealth. We investigate a model with overlapping generations and heterogenous households where parents derive utility directly from their bequests. Using the coefficient of variation as the measure of...

This paper reviews the principal source of India’s wealth distribution statistics, which is constituted by the five decennial Reserve Bank of India National Sample Survey Organization Surveys on Debt and Investment of 1961-62, 1971-72, 1981-82, 1991-92, and 2002-03. The data available are...

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...

The aim of this paper is to examine the concentration of wealth among the group of top wealth holders, defined as those with wealth in excess of a high cut off. The paper begins by considering the definition of this cut off, analogous to the definition of a poverty line at the other end of the...

This study discusses the evolution of personal wealth in transition economies. While data availability is still a problem, the available indirect evidence suggests privatization has resulted in an increase in personal wealth but also in personal wealth inequality, especially in the countries...

This paper discusses issues that arise in the comparison of estimates of wealth holdings and their distribution in light of data for selected OECD countries. We find large differences in the level of wealth, depending on whether the mean or median levels are compared across countries....

A core question in the contemporary debate on distributive justice is how the fair distribution of income is affected by differences in talent and effort. Important theories of distributive justice, such as strict egalitarianism, liberal egalitarianism and libertarianism, all give different...

This paper examines optimal redistribution in a model with high- and low-skilled individuals with heterogeneous tastes for labor. We compare the extent to which optimal policies based on different normative criteria obey the principles of compensation (for differential skills) and responsibility...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...