The main waves of a pandemic and subsequent disease outbreaks in the following years influence the evolution of the distributions of health and wealth, leading to differences in the ability to mitigate future income shocks. We study consumption smoothing and precautionary behaviour associated...

Resource risk is a core ingredient of models of wealth inequality in modern economies, but remains understudied in explanations of inequality in early human and small-scale societies that can inform us about the origins of inequality. Resource risk generates variation in resources and leads to...

Rent seeking leads to a misallocation of resources that worsens economic outcomes and reduces aggregate welfare. We conduct a quantitative examination of the distributional effects of rent extraction via the financial sector. Rent seeking introduces a possibility for insurance against...