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...

This paper is the overview chapter of an edited volume on quot;The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation.quot; The paper offers the author's perspective on the government's role as a redistributive agent. Taxation and public spending programs are analyzed using the...

A large literature has documented a significant increase in the return to college over the past 30 years. This increase is typically measured using nominal wages. I show that from 1980 to 2000, college graduates have increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas that are characterized by a...

After 1984 and following economic liberalisation, income inequality in Mexico has increased. Some of the main factors that have contributed to this trend are the relative expansion of the average income in the service sector in relation to the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, which is...

A large literature has documented a significant increase in the return to college over the past 30 years. This increase is typically measured using nominal wages. I show that from 1980 to 2000, college graduates have increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas that are characterized by a...

After 1984 and following economic liberalisation, income inequality in Mexico has increased. Some of the main factors that have contributed to this trend are the relative expansion of the average income in the service sector in relation to the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, which is...

We study the distributional effect of a wage indexation mechanism - the Scala Mobile (SM) - that heavily compressed the distribution of Italian wages during the 1970s and 1980s. The SM imposed large real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution and was essentially irrelevant for...

During the 2000s Chile achieved rapid economic growth and improved most labour market indicators: the unemployment rate fell; the mix of employment by occupational position and sector improved; the educational level of the employed population, the percentage of registered workers, and labour...

During the 2000s, El Salvador experienced slow economic growth for Latin American standards. The country underwent a recession during the international crisis of 2008, but returned to pre-recession output level in 2011. Changes in labour market conditions were mixed. The unemployment rate fell,...

The Uruguayan story was one of declines in the early years of the 2000s in most indicators, followed by improvements in all of them. Economic growth was negative in the early years due to a severe economic crisis, positive and rapid thereafter except during the international crisis of 2008. Most...