The Dynamics of Property Rights in Modern Autocracies

By Dan Cao and Roger Lagunoff

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2023

We study a dynamic model of property appropriation in autocracies. To maintain the appearance of the rule of law, an autocrat reassigns property only when the reassignment is acceptable to all affected citizens. Nevertheless, the autocrat can appropriate ...

The Micro Anatomy of Macro Consumption Adjustments

By Rafael Guntin, Pablo Ottonello, and Diego J. Perez

American Economic Review, August 2023

We study crises characterized by large adjustments of aggregate consumption through their microlevel patterns. We document the cross-sectional patterns of consumption adjustment across the income distribution and find large adjustments for top-income hous...

Market Structure, Oligopsony Power, and Productivity

By Michael Rubens

American Economic Review, September 2023

I examine the effects of oligopsony power on allocative efficiency and income redistribution by studying a size regulation in the Chinese tobacco industry that led to ownership consolidation. I show that separate identification of input price markdowns, g...

Decision Theory and Stochastic Growth

By Arthur Robson, Larry Samuelson, and Jakub Steiner

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2023

This paper examines connections between stochastic growth and decision problems. We use tools from the theory of large deviations to show that wishful thinking decision problems are equivalent to utility maximization problems, both of which are equivalent...

Measuring Intergenerational Income Mobility: A Synthesis of Approaches

By Nathan Deutscher and Bhashkar Mazumder

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2023

The literature on intergenerational income mobility uses a diverse set of measures and there is limited knowledge about whether these measures provide similar information and yield similar conclusions. We provide a framework to highlight the key concept...

Measuring Upward Mobility

By Debraj Ray ⓡ Garance Genicot

American Economic Review, November 2023

We conceptualize and measure upward mobility over income or wealth. At the core of our exercise is the Growth Progressivity Axiom: transfers of instantaneous growth rates from relatively rich to poor individuals increases upward mobility. This axiom, alon...

Changes in the Distribution of Black and White Wealth since the US Civil War

[Symposium: Wealth]

By Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn, and Moritz Schularick

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2023

The difference in the average wealth of Black and white Americans narrowed in the first century after the Civil War, but remained large and even widened again after 1980. Given high levels of wealth concentration both historically and today, dynamics at t...

Where Does Wealth Come From? Measuring Lifetime Resources in Norway

[Symposium: Wealth]

By Sandra E. Black, Paul J. Devereux, Fanny Landaud, and Kjell G. Salvanes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2023

In this paper, we use comprehensive administrative data on the population of Norway to create a measure of lifetime resources, which generates several stylized facts. First, lifetime resources are highly correlated with net wealth, but net wealth is more ...

The Importance of Financial Literacy: Opening a New Field

[Symposium: Wealth]

By Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia S. Mitchell

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2023

We undertake an assessment of our two decades of research on financial literacy, building on our empirical research and theoretical work casting financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital. We also draw on recent data to determine who is ...

Attendance Boundary Policies and the Limits to Combating School Segregation

By Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen and Mikkel Høst Gandil

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2024

What is the efficacy of redrawing school attendance boundaries as a desegregation policy? To provide causal evidence on this question, we employ novel data with unprecedented detail on the universe of Danish children and exploit changes in attendance boun...

Tax Equity in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

[Symposium: Taxation and Developing Countries]

By Pierre Bachas ⓡ Anders Jensen ⓡ Lucie Gadenne

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Income inequality is high and persistent in developing countries. In this paper, we ask what role taxation can or might play in reducing inequality in low and middle-income countries. Drawing on the recent literature, three findings emerge. Due to both ...

Is Pay Transparency Good?

By Zoë Cullen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. Since 2000, 71 percent of OECD countries have done so. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between coworkers doing similar work within...

Measuring Absolute Income Mobility: Lessons from North America and Europe

By Robert Manduca, Maximilian Hell, Adrian Adermon, Jo Blanden, Espen Bratberg, Anne C. Gielen, Hans van Kippersluis, Keunbok Lee, Stephen Machin, Martin D. Munk, Martin Nybom, Yuri Ostrovsky, Sumaiya Rahman, and Outi Sirniö

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

We use linked parent-child administrative data for five countries in North America and Europe, as well as detailed survey data for two more, to investigate methodological challenges in the estimation of absolute income mobility. We show that the commonly ...

Predistribution versus Redistribution: Evidence from France and the United States

By Antoine Bozio, Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, Malka Guillot, and Thomas Piketty

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

We construct series of posttax income for France over the 1900–2018 period and compare them with US series. We quantify the extent of redistribution—the reduction from pretax to posttax inequality—and estimate the contribution of redistribution in e...

Multigenerational Transmission of Wealth: Florence, 1403–1480

By Marianna Belloc, Francesco Drago, Mattia Fochesato, and Roberto Galbiati

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

By using hand-collected data on households' wealth assessments, we study multigenerational mobility in Florence during the late Middle Ages. We find that Florentine society was more mobile than one would expect but also that multigenerational mobility was...

The Decline of Cities and Inequality

By Mehmet Yorukoglu

American Economic Review, May 2002

Redistributive Capital Taxation Revisited

By Özlem Kina, Ctirad Slavík, and Hakki Yazici

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2024

This paper uses a rich quantitative model with endogenous skill acquisition to show that capital-skill complementarity provides a quantitatively significant rationale to tax capital for redistributive governments. The optimal capital income tax rate is 67...

Inequality, Taxation, and Sovereign Default Risk

By Minjie Deng

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2024

Income inequality and worker migration significantly affect sovereign default risk. Governments often impose progressive taxes to reduce inequality, which redistribute income but discourage labor supply and induce emigration. Reduced labor supply and a sm...

Shocks, Frictions, and Inequality in US Business Cycles

By Christian Bayer, Benjamin Born, and Ralph Luetticke

American Economic Review, May 2024

We show how a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) model with incomplete markets and portfolio choice can be estimated in state space using a Bayesian approach. To render estimation feasible, the structure of the economy can be exploited and the dimen...

Inheritances and Wealth Inequality, 1989-1998

By Edward N. Wolff

American Economic Review, May 2002