We review research on the dynamics and distribution of individual earnings and family income. We start with univariate earnings models, which dominate the literature and are often used as the exogenous component of family income in structural models of saving. We present a version of the linear...

Top income inequality in the United States has increased considerably within occupations. This phenomenon has led to a search for a common explanation. We instead develop a theory where increases in income inequality originating within a few occupations can "spill over" through consumption into...

Heathcote et al. (2010) conducted an empirical analysis of several dimensions of inequality in the United States over the years 1967-2006, using publicly-available survey data. This paper expands the analysis, and extends it to 2021. We find that since the early 2000s, the college wage premium...

We explore the evolution of income inequality and mobility in the U.S. for a large number of subnational groups defined by race and ethnicity, using granular statistics describing income distributions, income mobility, and conditional income growth derived from the universe of tax filers and W-2...

We provide a method to measure welfare, in money-metric terms, taking into account expectations about the future. Our two key assumptions are that (1) the expenditure function is separable between the present and the future, and (2) there are some households that do not face idiosyncratic...

A subset of harm reduction strategies encourages individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good; examples include e-cigarettes (substitutes for combustible cigarettes) and methadone and buprenorphine (substitutes for opioids). Such harm reduction methods have...

We establish the Hurwicz-Uzawa integrability of the broad class of discrete-choice additive random-utility models of individual consumer behavior with perfect substitutes preferences and divisible goods. We derive the corresponding indirect uility function and then establish a representative...

This paper analyzes the determinants of health insurance enrollment and health expenditure in Ghana using micro data from wave 7 of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) with emphasis on the role of risk preferences and the availability of health facilities in one's own community. It is...

Amidst the recent resurgence of inflation, this paper investigates the interplay of corporate profits and income distribution in shaping inflation and aggregate demand within the New Keynesian framework. We derive a novel analytical condition for profits to be procyclical and inflationary....

This paper characterizes the transition dynamics of a continuous-time neoclassical production economy with capital accumulation in which households face idiosyncratic income risk and cannot commit to repay their debt. Therefore, even though a full set of contingent claims that pay out...