How to explain rising income and wealth inequality? We build an original heterogeneous-agent model with three key features: (i) an explicit link between firm's market power and top income shares, (ii) a granular representation of the tax and transfer system, and (iii) three assets with...

This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that landed elites may block technological change and economic development if they fear that they will lose future political power (Acemoglu and Robinson (2002, 2006, and 2012). It exploits a plausible exogenous change in the distribution of political...

In this paper we study Brain Drain (BD) and Fiscal Competition (FC) in a unified framework for the European Union (EU) specific context. Potential mobility of educated workers can increase the degree of FC through taxation or the provision of public education. An increase in FC can be caused by...

We analyze investment decisions when information is costly, with and without delegation to an agent. We use a rational-inattention model and compare it with a canonical signal-extraction model. We identify three "investment conditions". In "sour" conditions, no information is acquired and no...

The recent theorical literature on the political economy of growth displays contrasting findings on the nature of the political link between income inequality and growth. In this paper, we explain this contrast and argue that in a democracy, when redistribution is in the form of government...

In this paper we study Brain Drain (BD) and Fiscal Competition (FC) in a unified framework for the European Union (EU) specific context. Potential mobility of educated workers can increase the degree of FC through taxation or the provision of public education. An increase in FC can be caused by...

We are interested in the relation between Gini coefficients of education, educational variables, and growth. We specify a system of 14 difference equations with lagged dependent variables in education variables, as well as a growth regression, auxiliary equations for savings and investment...

We argue that promoting education may be a means to reduceincome inequality. When workers of different skill levels areimperfect substitutes in production, an increase in the level ofhuman capital in the economy reduces the return to education.Hence, a given compression of after-tax incomes can...

We develop a political economy model that might explain the different environmental performance of countries, through educational choices. Individuals decide whether to invest in additional education according to their expectations regarding future environmental quality. They also vote on a tax...

This paper studies how linear tax and education policy should optimally respond to skill-biased technical change (SBTC). SBTC affects optimal taxes and subsidies by changing i) direct distributional benefits, ii) indirect redistributional effects due to wage-(de)compression, and iii) education...