Although it is often argued that wealth inequality matters more for economic growth than income inequality, this relationship has rarely been studied empirically, with a few exceptions covering a very restricted country sample or short timeframe. Leveraging hitherto unexploited wealth inequality...

What has happened to inequality between and within countries since 1990? In this paper we explore who have been the winners and losers from global growth since 1990. We find that falls in total global inequality in the last 30 years are predominantly attributable to rising prosperity in China....

The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and income inequality. Theoretically, there are grounds for both a positive and negative relationship between the two variables. Our main finding is that financial development contributes...

We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit market imperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, and history, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth...

This paper is a review of the post-war literature on income distribution and development. It argues that the literature has cycled from one consensus to another, responding to emerging policy issues and new analysis. On the basis of the review, the paper identifies five areas that will command...

What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We exploit variation in historical inheritance rules for land in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible....

Economic Growth and Distribution isolates and compares the logical structures and methodological underpinnings underlying the relationship between economic growth and distribution. It carries out an in-depth analysis of a wide range of issues connected with growth theory considered from...

This study presents new empirical results, using microdata from the LIS database, on development patterns in economic inequality for a set of countries that are less covered in the empirical literature, mostly due to the lack of appropriate data. After discussing the main challenges when...