This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The...

We suggest an explanation for the existence of “mission drift”, the tendency for Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) to lend money to wealthier borrowers rather than to the very poor. We focus on the relationship between MFIs and external funding institutions. We assume that both the MFIs and...

We analyze the link between financial development and income inequality for a broad unbalanced dataset of 138 developed and developing countries over the years 1960 to 2008. Using credit-to-GDP as measure of financial development, our results reject theoretical models predicting a negative...

This paper proposes three theoretical mechanisms through which polygyny may be related to social unrest. The mechanisms are related to different dimensions of grievance-inducing and, partly, greed-related inequality, which may occur in polygynous societies. These dimensions include (i) economic,...

We propose a theory of indebted demand, capturing the idea that large debt burdens by households and governments lower aggregate demand, and thus natural interest rates. At the core of the theory is the simple yet under-appreciated observation that borrowers and savers differ in their marginal...

This paper examines the distributional implications of inflation on top income shares in 12 advanced economies using data over the period 1920-2016. We use Local Projections to analyze how top income shares respond to an inflation shock, and panel regressions in which all variables are defined...

Rising income inequality since the 1980s in the United States has generated a substantial increase in saving by the top of the income distribution, which we call the saving glut of the rich. The saving glut of the rich has been as large as the global saving glut, and it has not been associated...

We provide an interesting empirical evidence dealing with the cross country data on equality i.e. movements of Gini coefficient over last four decades. This seems to suggest a robust empirical evidence that the growth or change in inequality across nations has a negative relation with initial...