This paper investigates how taxes affect relative mobility in the income distribution in the US. Household panel data drawn from the PSID between 1967 and 1996 is employed to analyse the relationship between marginal tax rates and the probability of staying in the same income decile. Exogenous...

Thomas Piketty's widely-noted and bestselling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, does much to advance our empirical understanding of rising high-end wealth concentration, which is one of the central issues of our time. But its theoretical approach and policy recommendations differ...

One prominent strand of the new growth theory has identified the political process as a potential channel to link high inequality to lower long-term growth. Several authors have argued that higher inequality causes higher demand for redistribution, which leads to greater redistribution and...

One prominent strand of the new growth theory has identified the political process as a potential channel to link high inequality to lower long-term growth. Several authors have argued that (1) higher inequality causes higher demand for redistribution, (2) which leads to greater redistribution...

Standard income inequality indices can be interpreted as a measure of welfare loss entailed in departures from equality of outcomes, for egalitarian social welfare functions defined on the distribution of outcomes. But such a welfare interpretation has been criticized for a long time on the...

Standard income inequality indices can be interpreted as a measure of welfare loss entailed in departures from equality of outcomes, for egalitarian social welfare functions defined on the distribution of outcomes. But such a welfare interpretation has been criticized for a long time on the...

Recent models of economic fairness assume that at least some people are motivated to reduce economic differences between themselves and other individuals. In addition to this motive, this paper investigates whether people care also about differences between third parties. An experiment is...

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...

Most people tend to equate success with merit, a tendency that is particularly pronounced among conservatives. However, in practice it is exceedingly difficult to discern the relative impact of luck and effort to economic success. Based on a large-scale online study that samples the general US...

A behavioural model of the firm and economic growth is presented whereby the level of economic efficiency, the choice of technology, and the rate of technical change, are all affected by firm organization and institutional variables. In this model, high- and low-wage firms can be cost...