Achieving low unemployment in an environment of weak growth is a major policy challenge; a more egalitarian distribution of hours worked could be the key to solving it. Whether worksharing actually increases employment, however, has been debated controversially. In this article we present...

Credit affects individuals' perceptions and experiences of inequality. Having access to credit enables those in lower- and middle-income groups to consume an array of products and services that they otherwise would not be able to afford, thereby taking the edge off discontent. Citizens with...

This paper presents microeconomic simulation techniques to examine what drives differences in inequality across countries. The simulation decomposes cross-country inequality differences into the importance of individual decisions, such as fertility, mating, labor force participation, and...

The question of whether household structure converges with economic growth and urbanization. The question of whether household structure converges with economic growth and urbanization has been long discussed, but comparative empirical evidence is scant. This paper takes advantage of newly...

Despite many approaches of neoclassical and endogenous growth theory, economists still face problems in explaining the reasons for income differences between countries. Institutional economics and the deep determinants of growth literature try to depart from pure economic facts to examine...

The paper is about the political consequences of increasing economic inequality in Western economies. Political theorists have often stressed that democracy is in troubles when its population is not broadly uniform in income and wealth because unequal economic resources can easily translate into...

The positive influences of institutions to economic growth, commonly measured by GDP per capita, have been intensively tested by many empirical studies. However, as the challenges of pollution, corruption, and inequality raise up, the quality of economic development and how to achieve the good...

Trust among individuals of a society is an important dimension of social capital and may have different economic and development implications. The present study is an attempt to investigate the relationship of trust with economic growth and human development. It is unique in at least two...

Despite the many approaches of neoclassical and endogenous growth theory, economists still face problems explaining the reasons for income differences between countries. Institutional economics and the deep determinants of growth literature try to depart from pure economic facts to examine...