New Zealand has seen dramatic changes in minimum wage policies since 2000. The adult minimum wage has increased 75% in CPI-adjusted real terms. In addition, the youth minimum wage was abolished in two stages, resulting in a 125% increase in the real minimum wage for 16-19-year-old workers. We...

The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decrease in the rate of income convergence across states and in population flows to wealthy places. These changes coincide with (1) an increase in housing prices in productive areas, (2) a divergence in the skill-specific real returns to living in...

Inequality in metropolitan areas is part of a paradoxical triangle of competing motives overresources allocation. Chief among inequality/equity rivals is the penchant for urban economicdevelopment, but in recent decades, ecological sustainability has also become increasinglyimportant in this...

A rise in the minimum wage may contribute to decrease earnings inequality by promoting larger wage increases for workers in the low tail of the wage distribution, but it may also increase inequality by promoting layoffs. This paper uses a semiparametric model to analyze the impact on inequality...

We use a simple labour demand framework with heterogeneous workers to evaluate the French 35-hour law impacts on inequality and employment. Our simulations result in a favourable effect of the 35-hour work week on employment levels, but unfavourable effects on working hours: job creations fall...

This paper explores a new theoretical and empirical approach to the assessment of human well-being, relevant to current challenges of social fragmentation in the presence of globalization and technological advance. We present two indexes of well-being - solidarity (S) and agency (A) - to be...

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically how employment subsidies should be targeted. We contrast measures involving targeting workers with low incomes/abilities and targeting the unemployed under the criteria of "approximate welfare efficiency" (AWE). Thereby we can identify policies...

We analyze the redistributive (dis)advantages of a minimum wage over income taxation in competitive labor markets. A minimum wage causes more unemployment, but also leads to more skill formation as unemployment is concentrated on low-skilled workers. A simple condition based on three sufficient...

The chapter examines how the various dimensions of economic inequality between men and women are analyzed today. Beyond the gender wage gap—a central issue—and of course the still far from equal sharing of housework, the chapter also reviews research on gender inequality in access to...

After a decade of strong progress toward the goal of reducing the high levels of income disparities, there are clear signs of a deceleration in the pace of inequality reduction in Latin America. This paper argues that the deceleration is the result of two set of reasons. First, several of the...