We consider an infinite-horizon inter-generational economy with identical agents differing only in their inherited wealth and with a constant-returns-to-scale technology using capital and labour (called "effort") and displaying a purely idiosyncratic risk. If effort is contractible, full...

This paper combines national accounts, household surveys, fiscal data, wealth rankings and election polls, in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of income and wealth inequality in Hong Kong, as well as its impact on political cleavages over the 1981-2020 period. We find a...

When a lengthy book is widely discussed in academic circles and the popular media, it is probably inevitable that the arguments of the book will be simplified in the telling and retelling. In the case of my book <em>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</em> (2014), a common simplification of the main...

A recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics. Top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid. Hence, aggregate economic...

The objective of this research is to document and to explain trends in inequality in 20th century France. Data from income tax returns (1915-98), wage tax returns (1919-98) and inheritance tax returns (1902-94), is used in order to compute fully homogeneous, yearly estimates of income...

These seminar notes report preliminary findings from a survey run in July 1998 in France on individual attitudes toward income inequality. The main finding is that people simply do not seem to disagree very much about the ideal pay scale and income ratios across individuals. Low-income...

This Paper presents data on the evolution of top incomes and wages from 1956 to 2000 in India using individual tax returns data. Our data shows that the shares of the top 0.01%, the top 0.1% and the top 1% in total income shrank very substantially until the early-to-mid 1980s, but then went back...

Cette recherche utilise l'extension de l'Allocation Parental d'Education (APE) au 2ème enfant survenue au 1/7/1994 comme une expérience naturelle permettant d'estimer l'élasticité de l'activité féminine et de la fécondité en France. Les deux sources indépendantes et complémentaires que...

This chapter reviews the existing theories of persistent inequality across generations. The chapter discusses total economic inequality both in wealth and in earnings and focuses on the intergenerational mobility dimension of total inequality. The chapter presents a nonexhaustive, nontechnical...