Major epidemics of the last two decades (SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola and Zika) have been followed by increases in inequality (Furceri, Loungani, Ostry and Pizzuto, 2020). In this paper, we show that the extent of fiscal consolidation in the years following the onset of these pandemics has played an...

The Gini index is the most widely accepted inequality measure across the Globe, with almost all governmental and international agencies using it to summarise income or wealth inequality in a nation or the world. Although originally developed to be a standardised measure of statistical dispersion...

Recent insights from the philosopher Larry Temkin have suggested a new basis for the measurement of income inequality, founded on the notion of individual complaints about income distribution. Under certain specifications of the relationship between complaints and personal incomes it can be...

This paper investigates the role of discount rate heterogeneity for wealth inequality. The key idea is to infer the distribution of preference parameters from the observed age profile of wealth inequality. The contribution of preference heterogeneity to wealth inequality can then be measured...

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...