Patented innovation is a predominately local phenomena. It is also an indicator of economic growth. Using data on U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), we examine the long-run effect of economic freedom, and each of its three components, on local patent activity. We find that increased...

This paper introduces a solution for the fair division of common property resources in production economies with multiple inputs and outputs. It is derived from complementing the Walrasian solution by welfare bounds, whose ethical justification rests on commonality of ownership. We then apply...

Equal access to education is a basic human right. But in many countries gaps in education between various groups are staggering. An education Gini index - a new indicator for the distribution of human capital and welfare - facilitates comparison of education inequality across countries and over...

Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century has attracted more attention than it perhaps deserves given that its main empirical claim, that wealth inequality is bound to occur in "capitalist" economies because the rate of return r is greater than the rate of economic growth g (r g), is not rigorously...

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries accept massive numbers of migrants from poor countries and pay wages that dramatically improve over outside options but are meagre by the standards of natives. As such they do dramatically more per capita to reduce global inequality than do the...

Using data from the World Values Survey and the 2006 Gallup World Poll, we examined how individual well-being was related to societal perceptions relevant for peace. Across both datasets, happy people reported greater trust and confidence in the government. Moreover, this relation was moderated...

This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from...

Using panel data of 17 OECD countries for 1980-2011, we find that the distributional consequences of fiscal consolidations depend significantly on the level of private indebtedness. Austerity leads to a strong and persistent increase in income inequality during periods of private debt overhang....

This paper examines the social welfare bases of the measurement of income inequality among the inhabitants of the world. We develop a general family of global inequality indices which encompasses different concepts of global equity, from the cosmopolitan to the nationalist view. The analysis...

This paper presents a novel way to disentangle inequality aversion over time from inequality aversion between regions in the computation of the Social Cost of Carbon. Our approach nests a standard efficiency based Social Cost of Carbon estimate and an equity weighted Social Cost of Carbon...