We examine how socio-political conflict in Bolivia has affected its economic performance since the 1970s. Such conflict includes strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Since conflict has costs, it diverts resources away from production, tends to reduce investment...

This paper studies theoretically and empirically why and how labor policies may reduce productivity and employment in order to stabilize labor incomes and redistribute resources. It proposes a specific stylized model where the tradeoffs facing labor policies are influenced by structural factors,...

We present a model of income tax avoidance with heterogeneous agents, assuming the presence of a comparison income effect and of a psychic cost (disutility) of tax dodging. We analyse the policy preferences of the agents, and identify a median-voter political equilibrium. Paralleling previous...

Empirically, the income share is procyclical for the low-income groups and acyclical for the top 5%. We find that business cycle models should consider overlapping generations and elastic labor supply in order to replicate this finding.

The paper analyzes the labor market effects of globalization when foreign market entry is costly and risky. With flexible labor markets, a fall in foreign market entry cost tends to generate more income inequality. By contrast, when workers cannot easily switch industries and wages are...

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the link between income and subjective well-being. We find that, for the whole sample of nineteen European countries, although income is positively correlated with both happiness and life satisfaction, reference income exerts a...

We analyze a generalized neoclassical growth model that combines a normalized CES production function and possible asymmetries of savings out of factor incomes. This generalized model helps to shed new light on a recent debate concerning the impact of factor substitution and income distribution...

We develop a model of international trade between two symmetric countries that features inter-group inequality between entrepreneurs and workers, and also intra-group inequality within each of those two groups. Individuals in the economy are heterogeneous with respect to their entrepreneurial...

We investigate the evolution of global welfare in two dimensions: income per capita and life expectancy. First, we estimate the marginal distributions of income and life expectancy separately. More importantly, in contrast to previous univariate approaches, we consider income and life expectancy...

This paper develops a new open-economy endogenous growth model where technology diffusion allows for a stable and non-degenerate world income distribution. In accordance with the empirical literature, I find that country characteristics such as the social infrastructure, the degree of openness,...