This paper examines long-term trends in aggregate wealth and inheritance and in their distributions, focusing on developed economies. A key stylized fact is that wealth is less equally distributed than income. Financial assets predominate among the wealthy, while owner-occupied housing is...

This paper aims to explain the rise and fall of communism by exploring the interplay between economic incentives and social preferences transmitted by ideology. We introduce inequality-averse and inefficiency-averse agents and analyze their conflict through the interaction between leaders with...

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade...

We study a series of sustained growth models in which households' preferences are affected by the consumption of other households as summarized by average consumption. In endogenous growth models, the equilibrium paths involve lower savings and lower growth than the corresponding efficient...

This paper presents the analysis of the results of the National Program for Professional Qualification - PNQ in Piracicaba/Sao Paulo - Brazil. It analyzed the impact of PNQ on the income of workers. The Theory of Human Capital is presented as a suitable theoretical basis. We used econometric...

Correlations between the earnings of siblings reflect shared family and community background, but evidence is mixed on the relative magnitudes of these influences. We estimate long run earnings correlations between brothers, school mates and teenage neighbors jointly in a unified framework....

The study investigates disparities in social development in 144 countries worldwide. In the paper we aim to investigate cross-country differences in social development level in year 2011, as well as to estimate inequalities on the field. Secondly, we assess relative social development level...

In this paper, the world distribution of personal incomes (WDPI) is estimated using a global sample comprising country sample clones. A clone is a random sample that reproduces – with predetermined high probability and precision – an unknown survey sample using information that is 'encoded'...

It is widely argued that ICTs enable the inclusion of low-skilled and traditionally marginalized groups, such as women, people with disabilities, and workers at the base of the pyramid (BoP), in the labor market. In this paper, we investigate the determinants of female participation in the labor...