Atkinson: Can we reduce income inequality in OECD countries? (2015)
Restricted access to the paper here. The Point: Atkinson tries to "inject a more optimistic note into the debate about inequality.” He argues that high levels of inequality are not inevitable and puts forward ‘old’ and ‘new’ measures that can reduce inequality. Old proposals include - increase progressive income tax, lifetime capital receipts tax, individual based social insurance. New proposals include - minimum inheritance tax, government savings accounts with guaranteed po
Atkinson: Bringing Income Distribution in from the Cold (1997)
Restricted access to the paper here. The Point: Tony Atkinson argues why we need to incorporate the income distribution into economic analysis and gives examples of recent attempts in this area. In order to achieve this, the economic discipline needs to learn from other disciplines such as sociology and political science. He argues that will enable researchers to give definite answers to questions in which the ordinary person is interested. Such as: how can we use economic th
Piketty, Thomas, and Gabriel Zucman - Capital is Back: Wealth-income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700-2
A copy of the paper can be found here. The Point: Capital is back. Over the period 1870-2010, the wealth-income ratio has followed a U-shaped pattern. The nature of wealth has changed over the period 1700-2010, note the increasing role of housing after 1970. The low wealth-income ratio in the 1950s-70s is attributed to the world wars and anti-capital policies destructing a large part of the capital stock and reducing the market value of private wealth. From 1970-2010 aggregat
Neumayer and Plumper: Inequalities of Income and Inequalities of Longevity: A Cross-Country Study
A copy of the paper can be found here. The Point: Inequality in longevity is one of the most poignant forms of health inequality. Previous studies have focused on the statistically significant relationship between educational inequalities and life span variation in European countries (van Raalte AA, Kunst AE, Deboosere P, et. al). Other country level research has examined the extent to which socioeconomic inequality can provide some elucidation on the strong variation in adul
