This paper analyses the extent of income inequality and opportunity inequality in 25 European countries. The present work contributes to understanding the origin of standard income inequality, helping to identify potential institutional setups that are associated to opportu nity inequality. We...

The “prospect of upward mobility” (POUM) hypothesis formalised by Benabou and Ok (2001a) finds explicit assumptions under which some individuals that are poorer than the average optimally choose to oppose redistribution policies. The underlying intuition is that these individuals rationally...

This paper proposes an estimate of the extent of opportunity inequality and of its determinants in a sample of European countries, based on the Survey on Income and Living Conditions conducted in 2005. Although the ranking among Northern European and Mediterranean countries is generally...