How does inequality motivate people and at what cost? We develop a model of perpetual youth with heterogeneous upward-looking aspirations -- people value their consumption relative to the conditional mean of those above them in the distribution. Their survival depends on health capital produced...

For centuries it has been believed that the extension of the franchise in unequal societies would lead to relatively high levels of redistribution. According to international rankings, how- ever, among the fourteen most unequal countries in the world, nine have been democratic for at least the...

Economic and political decisions usually involve a trade-off between efficiency and equality considerations. While some inequality is expected to prevail in our soci- eties, high levels of it are objectionable on various grounds. One of the fundamental roles of government is to collect and...