Davies et al. (2008, 2011) provided the first estimates of the global distribution of wealth, using 2000 as the benchmark year. These estimates have been revised and updated since 2010, and the purpose of this paper is to explain the ways in which the estimation methodology has evolved and...

Some middle-income economies, many of which Latin American, have not achieved to make the transition into high-income status for long years and are allegedly trapped in middle-income status. While there is considerable consensus on the proximate causes of this phenomenon, we present a global...

This paper looks at the links between inequality of opportunity and views about the underlying processes that support economic success or failure. Unlike income inequality, inequality of opportunity isolates the extent to which inequality in circumstances beyond an individual's control...

We incorporate the division of income between capital and labor into analysis on the relationship between inequality and growth. Using historical data, we document that changes in the top 1 % income shares are positively associated with subsequent growth of per capita GDP when the capital share...

As embodied in the concept of "inequality extraction" (Branko Milanovic), it is not possible to increase inequality (especially income inequality) in a society sustainably to levels beyond what is actually socially acceptable (and even less to levels endangering physical subsistence of parts of...

After much empirical documentation of patterns of inequality, we address in this paper the need for a convincing interpretation of the causes of inequality in advanced countries. We set the current debate in the context of the evolution of ideas on inequality, including the debate on Thomas...

We study the impact of a government spending shock on the distribution of income and wealth between cohorts in a dynamic stochastic Overlapping Generations model with two types of households, Ricardian households and rule-of-thumb consumers. We demonstrate that an unexpected increase in...

Four alarming stylized facts have recently emerged in the United States: (i) a decline in the labor share of income; (ii) a decline in labor productivity; (iii) an increase in the top 1% wealth share, and (iv) an increase in the capital-income ratio. In Capital in the XXI Century, Thomas...

We propose a dynamic stochastic model of the intergenerational transmission of capital that accounts for fertility differentials. The evolution of the distribution of capital depends on a parent-to-child capital transmission technology, which captures how capital is diluted across siblings, and...

This paper presents a model of secular stagnation, income and wealth distribution, and employment in the Classical Political Economy tradition, that can be contrasted with the accounts by Piketty (2014) and Gordon (2015). In these explanations, an exogenous reduction in the growth rate g...