An optimal linear world income tax that maximizes a border-neutral social welfare function provides a drastic reduction in world consumption inequality, dropping the Gini coefficient from 0.69 to 0.25. In contrast an optimal decentralized (i.e., within countries) redistribution has miniscule...

The use of equivalence scales for the measurement of inequality and social welfare poses a difficult ethical and technical dilemma. If all individuals are weighted equally while individual welfare measures are based on income or consumption per equivalent adult, then standard properties assumed...

An optimal linear world income tax that maximizes a border-neutral social welfare function provides a drastic reduction in world consumption inequality, dropping the Gini coefficient from 0.69 to 0.25. In contrast an optimal decentralized (i.e., within countries) redistribution has miniscule...

This paper proposes a social welfare framework in which to analyze the relationships between growth, trends in inequality, mobility, and social welfare. An application of the framework to worldwide and regional data on per capita GDP suggests a lack of convergence at the world level, opposite...