This paper investigates preferences for limiting top incomes and wealth through a surveybased experiment with a large sample of participants (N = 3,954) from the US and Germany. Using a revealed preferences approach, we find that a significant majority (around 85%) of participants support income...

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of wealth ownership and wealth inequality in Latin American countries, using diverse published sources and primary data analysis for 16 nations. We produce estimates of the distribution of home ownership, land, and financial assets, and find very high...

Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy hold to a pessimistic belief in historical persistence -- they believe that Latin America has always had very high levels of inequality, suggesting it will be hard for modern social policy to create a more egalitarian society. This paper argues...

Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy hold to a pessimistic belief in historical persistence - they believe that Latin America has always had very high levels of inequality, suggesting it will be hard for modern social policy to create a more egalitarian society. This paper argues...

The Cambridge UK vs USA capital theory debates of the 1960s showed that the workhorse mainstream growth model relies on unsustainable assumptions. Its standard interpretation is not consistent with the last four decades of data. Part of an estimated increase in the ratio of personal wealth to...

Many studies of wealth inequality make the ergodic hypothesis that rescaled wealth converges rapidly to a stationary distribution. Changes in distribution are expressed through changes in model parameters, reflecting shocks in economic conditions, with rapid equilibration thereafter. Here we...

In a context of high economic uncertainty, this paper aims to analyse the impacts of uncertainty on income and wealth inequality in the four largest economies of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy and Spain. This is the first study to evaluate this relationship in these countries and the...

What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We exploit variation in historical inheritance rules for land in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible....

Why are some people wealth rich while others are poor? To what extent can governments affect inequality? Which instruments should they use? Answering these questions requires understanding why people save. Dynamic quantitative models of wealth inequality can help us to understand and quantify...

Rising inequality in income, wealth and consumption has received a good deal of public attention in the past years. At the same time, also macroeconomists are more and more interested in inequality as they have expanded their models to incorporate heterogeneity in the household sector. We supply...