Inflation and earnings growth can push some tax payers into higher brackets in the absence of inflation-indexed schedules. Moreover, inflation may affect the composition of individuals' income sources. As a result, depending on the relative tax burden of labor and capital, inflation may decrease...

Purchasing power adjusted incomes applied in cross-country comparisons are measured with bias. In this paper, we estimate the purchasing power parity (PPP) bias in Penn World Table incomes and provide corrected incomes. The bias is substantial and systematic: the poorer a country, the more its...

A model of segmented asset markets is developed, in which varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially. By this, a non-degenerate heterogeneity in wealth and the effective elasticity of substitution across households arises, affecting optimal markups chosen by firms. Furthermore,...

This paper investigated the link between inflation and the top decile income share after the global financial crisis. The analysis was done on a sample of 42 countries. We found that higher inflation has reduced the income going to the top decile. The main explanation is that inflation has...

We quantitatively analyze the way inflation alters the inequality of the income distribution in the U.S. economy. The main mechanism emphasized in this paper is the "bracket creep" effect according to which inflation pushes income into higher tax brackets. Governments adjust the nominal income...

The inequality growth during the last quarter century is explained as caused by a decreasing labor-labor exchange rate, i.e. devaluation of one's labor in exchange for other's labor embodied in the commodities affordable for one's earnings. We show that the productivity growth allows employers...

We present new empirical evidence for the US economy that inflation reduces the inequality of the earnings distribution. The main mechanism emphasized in this paper is the tax income bracket effect. Governments only adjust the nominal income tax brackets slowly to a rise in prices, typically...

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using "fictitious" monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of 23 up...

This paper builds a heterogeneous-households growth model of a small open economy with fixed resource (land) by integrating the Walrasian general equilibrium and neoclassical growth theories. The production side consists of two sectors. We use an alternative utility function proposed by Zhang,...

Changes in relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups can be expected to alter real income differentials between these groups. Using Mozambican household budget survey and price data from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we show that once relative price increases are...