The authors investigate the desirability of income taxes when the objective is to mitigate wasteful conspicuous consumption generated by people's status-seeking behavior. They consider the joint role of pre-tax wage inequality and of social norms determining how social status is assigned. They...

The authors investigate the desirability of income taxes when the objective is to mitigate wasteful conspicuous consumption generated by people's status-seeking behavior. They consider the joint role of pre-tax wage inequality and of social norms determining how social status is assigned. They...

We synthesize the findings from several recent papers on South Africa's very high income inequality. These papers use new datasets—including income tax data—and new empirical methods to investigate the drivers of household income and individual earnings inequality in South Africa. Increased...

Wage inequality has been significantly higher in the United States than in continental European countries (CEU) since the 1970s. Moreover, this inequality gap has further widened during this period as the US has experienced a large increase in wage inequality, whereas the CEU has seen only...

This paper studies the (Ramsey) optimal taxation of labor income when wage inequality is rising, as has been the case in many developed economies in recent decades. The tax schedule is a linear or affine function of labor income every period. Workers are ax-ante heterogenous in their initial...

Using a simple general equilibrium model of a small open economy that produces (i) an industrial good, (ii) an agricultural good, and (iii) a sector specific intermediate good, under competitive conditions, this paper examines the impact of a tax on labour on skilled-unskilled wage inequality....