It is not straightforward to define the ethics of responsibility in cases where the consequences of changes in factors within our control are partly determined by factors beyond our control. In this paper, we suggest that one plausible view is to keep us responsible for the parts of the...

This paper adds to our understanding of the causes of income inequality across nations by examining the influence of different aspects of gender equality or female empowerment. Whereas the economics of income inequality has been an area of active academic inquiry, the role of gender equality has...

Rising income inequalities are widely debated in public and academic discourse. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by proposing a new family of measures of unfair inequality. To do so, we acknowledge that inequality is not bad per se, but that its underlying sources need to be taken...

We estimate household equivalence scales using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We extend previous studies applying this approach by taking reference income into account. This allows separating needs-based from reference effects in the determination of income...

In this paper, we demonstrate how age-adjusted inequality measures can be used to evaluate whether changes in inequality over time are due to changes in the age structure. To this end, we use administrative data on earnings for every male Norwegian during 1967-2000. We find that the substantial...

Income inequality in Germany has been continuously increasing during the past 20 years. In general, this is understood as an increase in inequality of wages due to changes in bargaining power of employees. However, the role of changing household structure is widely neglected. Societal trends...

It is argued that the concept of well-being inequality cannot be properly defined without taking the referencing process into account. The reference effect depends on how frequently individuals compare with others and on the degree of social transparency in society. In this paper we employ the...

This paper focuses on two equity dimensions of climate policy, intra- and intergenerational equity, and analyzes the implications of equity preferences on climate policy, and on the production and consumption patterns in rich and poor countries. We develop a dynamic two-region model, in which...

Both buyers and sellers of goods and services may bene.t from letting their economic transactions go unrecorded for tax purposes. The supplier reduces his tax burden by underreporting income, whereas the consumer gains from buying a non-taxed lower-priced product. The distributional implications...

This paper shows that higher levels of perceived wage inequality are associated with a weaker (stronger) belief into meritocratic (non-meritocratic) principles as being important in determining individual wages. This finding is robust to the use of an instrumental-variable estimation strategy...