Empirical evidence on distributional preferences shows that people do not judge inequality as problematic per se but that they take the underlying sources of income differences into account. In contrast to this evidence, current measures of inequality do not adequately reflect these normative...

Der Beitrag analysiert die Argentinien-Krise, vergleicht die makroökonomische Entwicklung von Argentinien, Brasilien, Chile und Mexiko seit der Mexiko-Krise und entwickelt Indikatoren zur Beurteilung der Entwicklungschancen dieser Länder. Für Argentinien wie für Brasilien, Chile und Mexiko...

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing controversy on the distributional effects of structural reforms in developing countries. Applying inequality indices and Fields' (2001) decomposition methodology to Bolivian household survey data of the years 1989 to 1997, we identify recent trends...

European countries have the world's most redistributive tax and transfer systems. While they have been well equipped to deal with vertical inequality - that is, fostering redistribution from the rich to the poor - less is known about their performance in dealing with horizontal inequality, that...

We analyze whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has contributed to the typically wide income gaps in five Latin American host countries. We perform country-specific and panel cointegration techniques to assess the long-run impact of inward FDI stocks on income inequality among households in...

I investigate how government ideology and globalization are associated with top income shares in 16 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2010. I use the new World Top Incomes Database. Globalization is measured by the KOF index of globalization. The results show that the top 1% income share...

What was the impact of urban political structure on economic inequality in preindustrial times? I document that more closed political institutions were associated with higher economic inequality in a panel of early modern German cities. To investigate the mechanisms behind that...

A widely held view is that increasing globalisation and inequality are fostering support for populist actors. Surprisingly, when focusing on Germany and the U.S., populist voting is highest in less globalised regions with rather equal income distributions. Addressing this puzzle, I ask how the...

This paper studies the impact of the Protestant Reformation on wealth distribution and inequality in confessionally divided Germany, between 1400 and 1800. The Reformation expanded social welfare, but provided it in a particularistic way to insiders only. This gave Protestantism an ambiguous...