Using taxation and household survey data, this paper estimates top income shares for Indonesia during 1920-2004. Our results suggest that top income shares grew during the 1920s and 1930s, but fell in the post-war era. In more recent decades, we observe a sharp rise in top income shares during...

In recent years, researchers have used taxation statistics to estimate the share of total income held by the richest groups, such as the top 10% or the top 1%. Compiling a standardised top income shares dataset for thirteen developed countries, I find that there is a strong and significant...

Do income taxes levied at a state or regional level affect the after-tax distribution of income? Or do workers merely move between regions, causing pre-tax wages to adjust? This question is relevant both in across states in the United States, and across countries within the European Union. Using...

We investigate whether changes in economic inequality affect mortality in rich countries. To answer this question we use a new source of data on income inequality: tax data on the share of pretax income going to the richest 10 percent of the population in Australia, Canada, France, Germany,...

Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Survey of Income and Household Costs, this paper explores the effect of changing assortative mating patterns on income inequality. Evidence from theoretical and mathematically calibrated models suggest that assortative mating has distributional...

Using taxation statistics, we estimate the income share held by top income groups in Australia over the period 1921-2002. We find that the income share of the richest fell from the 1920s until the mid-1940s, rose briefly in the post-war decade, and then declined until the early-1980s. During the...

What impact do income and other demographic factors have on a voter’s partisan choice? Using post-election surveys of 14,000 voters in ten Australian elections between 1966 and 2001, I explore the impact that individual, local and national factors have on voters’ decisions. In these ten...

The relationship between income inequality and national savings is theoretically ambiguous, and past empirical studies have delivered mixed results. We revisit the question using a newly available source of data on inequality: the income share of the richest 10 percent and the richest 1 percent....

Community-based selection of social program recipients has the potential to benefit from local knowledge about individuals in need. This informational advantage however might be offset by local elite capture and administrative incompetency. Using Indonesia's anti-poverty program, this paper...

Several cross-country studies have observed a negative correlation between inequality and interpersonal trust. Using data from 59 countries, I instrument for inequality using the relative size of the mature-aged cohort, and find that a rise in inequality reduces trust.