“Light” welfare states were perceived by some as one source of East Asian economicdynamism. Didier Jacobs has examined the strengths of several East Asian socialwelfare systems and the challenges they face after the financial crisis.Japan has a fully-fledged social welfare system. Yet her...

Why are some countries so much richer than others? Development Accounting is a first-passattempt at organizing the answer around two proximate determinants: factors of productionand efficiency. It answers the question “how much of the cross-country income variance canbe attributed to...

This paper aims at identifying the labour share (wage-productivity gap) as a major factor inthe evolution of inequality and employment. To this end, we use annual data for the US, UKand Sweden over the past forty years and estimate country-specific systems of labourdemand and Gini coefficient...

This paper studies the relationship between investor protection, financial risk sharing and income inequality. In the presence of market frictions, better protection makesinvestors more willing to take on entrepreneurial risk while lending to firms. This implies lower cost of external finance...

This paper investigates the evolution of earnings inequality in urban China from 1989 to2006. After decomposing the variance of log of earnings into transitory and permanent twoparts, we find that both components are important contributors to the total variance ofearnings. We also find that the...

Using data on annual individual labor income from three representative panel datasets(German SOEP, British BHPS, Australian HILDA) we investigate a) the selectivity of itemnon-response (INR) and b) the impact of imputation as a prominent post-survey means tocope with this type of measurement...

Die Ungleichheit in Deutschland hatzugenommen und ist hartnäckigergeworden. Die noch immer mächtigewohlfahrtsstaatliche Umverteilungverdeckt nur eine zunehmend tiefereGesellschaftsspaltung. Diese Spaltungschadet dem Wachstum kurzfristigdurch Konsumausfall und langfristigdadurch, dass eine...