Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality,...

Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality,...

This paper provides a survey of normative approaches to inequality measurement, to be published as a chapter in a volume of income inequality. We present general methods for deriving ethical inequality indexes from social-evaluation orderings such as the Atkinson-Kolm-Sen and Kolm procedures.

One of the most important conclusions of recent theoretical work on the economics of inequality is the recognition that equity and efficiency represent complementary policy goals in many contexts. In this essay, I examine possible complementarities between equality and efficiency from the...

This paper seeks to evaluate the findings of cross-national research on the relationship between income inequality and democracy and to assess the prospects of future research in the area.

The literature on optimal redistributional instruments begins with the assumption that society has some preference for equality, leaving the precise degree unspecified. It then asks: How should society pursue that preference? More specifically, what kinds of policy instruments — whether...

The upcoming one-year repeal of the federal estate tax creates an opportunity to reconsider the taxation of wealth transfers. This paper argues that federal wealth transfer taxes should be retained and potentially expanded. The estate tax contributes importantly to the progressivity of the tax...

Altruism, giving and pro-social conduct, and reciprocity, are the basis of the existence and performance of societies, through their various occurrences: in families; among the diverse motives of the political and public sector; as the general respect and moral conduct which permit life in...

The federal government's welfare reform efforts have two defining characteristics: first, welfare reform requires welfare recipients to work for their checks (and to move toward permanent, self-sustainable employment); and second welfare reform devolves administrative responsibility to the...