Since Aristotle, a vast literature has suggested that economic inequality has important political consequences. Higher inequality is thought to increase demand for government income redistribution in democracies and to discourage democratization and promote class conflict and revolution in...

Since globalisation accelerated in the early 1990s, income inequality has increased in most developed countries and in some middle-income countries, including China and India. Also, inequality has declined in most countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and in many Sub-Saharan African and...

Given that well-being is a concave function of income, inequality is inefficient from a utilitarian perspective. This paper proposes a way to express the utilitarian benefit from redistributive reforms in terms of out- put, i.e. as a share of GDP. Three applications are presented: First, in nine...

Davies et al. (2008, 2011) provided the first estimates of the global distribution of wealth, using 2000 as the benchmark year. These estimates have been revised and updated since 2010, and the purpose of this paper is to explain the ways in which the estimation methodology has evolved and...

In this paper, we estimate the recent evolution of global interpersonal inequality and examine the effect of omitted top incomes on the level and direction of global inequality. We propose a methodology to estimate the truncation point of household surveys by combining information on income...

There is a growing literature comparing the current financial crisis or Great Recession to the worst economic crisis of capitalism, the Great Depression. However, the role of rising income inequality, which has risen dramatically before both crises, is rarely discussed. In this paper we discuss...

A key aspect defining the contemporary income distribution is the (increasing) share the top holds compared to the rest. This paper shows that income concentration increases towards the very top of the distribution, while the shares the middle- and upper-middle-income groups hold remain stable...

In our article we review the secular stagnation hypothesis, firstly postulated by Hansen (1939), to describe the current macroeconomic dynamics faced by developed economies. Based in the existing literature, we elaborate on a workable definition of secular stagnation founded on four pillars:...

We analyze the impact of subsidies on R&D expenditures in the financial crisis and beyond. The financial crisis has led to considerable turmoil in financing and, as a result, to restrictions of firms' access to external financing. Utilizing this fact, we identify and analyze financing...