A model of endogenous growth is presented, based on productive public expenditures, and featuring some degree of income inequality, and polarization in policy preferences. The main innovation lays in the political process determining capital taxation that relies, both on voting and on "influence...

This paper offers an overview of Alberto Alesina's life and of his scholarly work (§ 1 and 2). It will be argued, that Alberto would have entirely deserved the award of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science, except only for his premature passing away. His foundational contribution was the...

We examine the effect of economic globalisation on income redistribution and hypothesise that it depends on ethnic fractionalisation. In highly fractionalised countries, powerful ethnicities are able to extract globalisation-induced benefits, whereas their governments face substantial political...

The traditional emphasis on breaking down output growth according to growth in inputs and growth in TFP is misplaced. More appropriately, we should break it down according to changes in "efficiency" and "technology". These two are equilibrium concepts, rather than purely technical properties of...

Although the determinants of income are complex, the results are surprisingly uniform. To a first approximation, top incomes follow a power-law distribution, and the redistribution of income corresponds to a change in the power-law exponent. Given the messiness of the struggle for resources, why...

We examine the relationship between capitalism and income inequality for a large sample of countries using an adjusted economic freedom index as proxy for capitalism and Gini coefficients based on gross-income as proxy for income inequality. Our results suggest that there is no robust...

We examine the relationship between capitalism and income inequality for a large sample of countries using an adjusted economic freedom index as proxy for capitalism and Gini coefficients based on gross-income as proxy for income inequality. Our results suggest that there is no robust...

Intergenerational inequality and old-age poverty are salient issues in contemporary China. China's aging population threatens the fiscal sustainability of its pension system, a key vehicle for intergenerational redistribution. We analyze the positive and normative effects of alternative pension...

Income equality and trust seem to go along with several other ingredients of social capital as determinants of economic growth across the globe. In a large sample of countries, equality in the distribution of income as measured by the World Bank and by The Standardized World Income Inequality...

The first volume of IDS Companions to Development Studies focuses on pivotal writing emerging from the IDS fellowship during the last 50 years. It includes five topics: perspectives and paradigms, debunking myths, development policy, gender and international perspectives, and policy, as well as...