This article reviews the distribution of income and wealth in the US from three basic perspectives that tend to be otherwise overlooked if the subject is framed primarily on the basis of the gross statistics: a) quantity and quality of work effort; b) quantity and quality of capital...

Covid-19 and war-induced commodity price fluctuations, and broadening price pressures have led to a surge in inflation in many sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. To adjust to increasing costs, firms have resorted to several measures including shuttering offices, reducing businesses, laying off,...

Net corporate profits have persisted at historical highs for almost 10 years. Such levels exceed what can be profitably re-invested, as evidenced by aggregate dividend payouts and buybacks nearing 6% of GDP. We argue that at such levels corporate profits operate effectively as a tax on the...

Amartya Sen’s impossibility of a Paretian liberal underscores the trade-off between two widely applied social principles—liberalism and Pareto-optimality: “If someone does have certain liberal values, then he [or she] may have to eschew his [or her] adherence to Pareto optimality” (Sen...

The COVID-19 pandemic risks exacerbating inequality in Asia. High frequency labor surveys show that the pandemic is having particularly adverse effects on younger workers, women and people that are more vulnerable. Pandemics have been shown to increase inequalities. As a result, income...

The paper describes inequality trends in selected emerging economies (Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa) in a range of monetary (i.e. income) and non-monetary dimensions of people’s life (i.e. education, health status, employment and subjective well-being)....

We study the effect of bank merger deregulation on market structure and wages in the banking industry. We show that state deregulation of bank mergers and acquisitions increased the market share of large, multi-state banks and lowered wages for bank workers by up to 8 percentage points, with...

This study assesses the economic and social impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 17 economies in Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE). More precisely, we investigate how different FDI inflows have affected various economic and social indicators, such as GDP growth, labour market...

Professional female athletes have long and bitterly complained that their compensation seriously lags behind that awarded to their male counterparts, and that this situation is unjust. The problem with this argument is that it is based on the labor theory of value, a long-discredited theory that...