A common assumption in the optimal taxation literature is that the social planner maximizes a welfarist social welfare function with weights decreasing with income. However, high transfer withdrawal rates in many countries imply very low weights for the working poor in practice. We reconcile...

Theoretical models of the Kuznets Curve have been purely analytical with little contribution towards an understanding of the timing of the process and the presence of additional mechanisms affecting its timing. This paper proposes an agent-based version of Acemoglu and Robinson's model of the...