We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using this matrix, we analyze how post-1500 migration has influenced the level of GDP per capita and within-country income inequality...

We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using this matrix, we analyze how post-1500 migration has influenced the level of GDP per capita and within-country income inequality...

The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and income inequality. Theoretically, there are grounds for both a positive and negative relationship between the two variables. Our main finding is that financial development contributes...

The combination of stagnant growth and high levels of income inequality renewed the debate about whether a more even distribution of income can spur economic activity. This paper tests for cross-country convergence in income inequality and estimates its impact on economic growth with a...

The effects of inequality on economic growth depend on several factors. On one hand, they depend on the time horizon considered, on the initial level of income and on its initial distribution. But, on the other hand, as growth and inequality are also uneven across space, it also seems relevant...

This paper uses recently published top 1% income share series in studying the inequality-development association. The top income shares data are of high quality and cover about a century for some countries and thus provide an interesting opportunity to study slow development processes. The...

A fundamental question in social sciences relates to the effect of wealth inequality on economic growth. Yet, in tackling the question, researchers have had to use income as a proxy for wealth. We derive a global measure of wealth inequality from Forbes magazine's listing of billionaires and...

In this paper we investigate the impact of technological change on inequalityin the presence of a landed elite using a standard unified growth model. We measure inequality by the ratio between land rent and wages and show that, before the onset of the fertility transition, technological progress...

Education has been one of the key determinants of economic growth around the world since 1965. In this paper, we discuss three different measures of education, and consider their relationship to the distribution of income as measured by the Gini coefficient as well as to economic growth across...