This paper describes the empirical regularities relating fiscal policy variables, the level of development and the rate of growth. We employ historical data, recent cross-section data, and newly constructed public investment series. Our main findings are: (i) there is a strong association...

This paper studies the evolution of income concentration in Japan from 1886 to 2002 by constructing long-run series of top income shares and top wage income shares, using income tax statistics. We find that (1) income concentration was extremely high throughout the pre-WWII period during which...

This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty alleviation using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 45 countries, we find a strong,...

We develop online survey experiments to analyze how information about inequality and taxes affects preferences for redistribution. Approximately 4,000 respondents were randomized into treatments providing interactive, customized information on U.S. income inequality, the link between top income...

This paper describes a simple model of technology adoption which combines the two engines of growth emphasized in the recent growth literature: human capital accumulation and technological progress. Our model economy does not create new technologies, it simply adopts those that have been created...

"Policymakers and economists disagree about the impact of bank regulations on the distribution of income. Exploiting cross-state and cross-time variation, we test whether liberalizing restrictions on intra-state branching in the United States intensified, ameliorated, or had no effect on income...

"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...

Recent studies argue that US inequality has increased less than previously thought, in particular due to a more modest rise of wealth and capital income at the top (Smith et al., 2019; Smith, Zidar and Zwick, 2020; Auten and Splinter, 2019). We examine the claims made in these papers point by point,...

This paper studies inequality in America through the lens of distributional macroeconomic accounts--comprehensive distributions of the aggregate amount of income and wealth recorded in the official macroeconomic accounts of the United States. We use these distributional macroeconomic accounts to...

This paper summarizes the main findings of a recent literature that has constructed top income shares time series over the long-run for more than 20 countries using income tax statistics. Top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total...