We provide an overview and synthesis of recent work on models of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms in international trade, paying particular attention to competition effects, pass-through, selection effects, and linking distributions of firm characteristics and outcomes. A...

There is a long-standing controversy over the question of whether targeting social transfers towards the bottom part of the income distribution actually enhances or weakens their redistributive impact. Korpi and Palme have influentially claimed that "the more we target benefits at the poor, the...

This paper analyzes the effect of changes in structural progressivity of national income tax systems on observed and actual income inequality. Using several unique measures of progressivity over the 1981-2005 period for a large panel of countries, we find that progressivity reduces inequality in...

A growing body of literature studies the effect of providing information about inequality to respondents of surveys on their preferences for redistribution. We provide a meta-analysis combining the results from 84 information treatments coming from 36 studies in Economics, Political Science,...

Should income transfers be conditional upon personal characteristics of the potential recipients (the so-called quot;taggingquot;) or should they only be tied to reported incomes? There is clear evidence that tagging and its assessment of the eligibility of applicants creates stigmatization. In...

This paper provides a normative justification for the use of a minimum wage as a redistributive tool in a competitive labor market. We show that a government interested in improving the wellbeing of the deserving poor, while being less concerned with their undeserving counterparts, can use a...

Government redistribution is increasingly important in today's world. The effect of income distribution on industrialization and growth, and the causes of income redistribution have been studied in the contemporary literature. The normative significance of income redistribution, however, which...