Since early 90s, the issue of income convergence across regions has been widely discussed in a number of papers, both looking at long-term tendencies and trying to establish the role played by several socio-economic determinants. Much less attention has instead been devoted to the analysis of...

We decompose the recent changes in regional inequality in Brazil into its components, highlighting the role of spatially blind social programs. We aggregate personal income micro data to the state level, differentiating 9 income sources, and assess the role of these components in the observed...

Previous literature on the distributional impact of the minimum wage in Germany has either focused on earnings and hourly wages (Caliendo et al., 2017), or is based on exante simulations (Müller and Steiner, 2013). This paper provides systematic descriptive ex-post evidence on the...

We develop a monopolistic-competition model of closed two-sector one-factor economy, where agents are (continuously) heterogeneous in their entrepreneurship abilities and choose between being employees or entrepreneurs. The sufficient conditions in terms of variable elasticity of substitution...

Natural advantages determine where agglomerations emerge. Also, efficiency and economies of scale determine how many agglomerations subsist and how they interact, forming complex urban hierarquies. Moreover, physical characteristics influence the way humans divide land into irregular parcels we...

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...

We develop a model of a city populated by heterogeneous agents. Agents self-select into entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurs set up firms which hire workers. We characterize the equilibrium matching between firms and workers, as well as the within-city assignment of agents to locations. We then...

This paper uses a simple model based on the board game Monopoly to analyze the drivers of house prices and wealth inequality. Simulations show that inequality generally builds up fast even if players have equal starting conditions and house prices are stable; rising house prices imply more...

We develop a general equilibrium model of earnings, income and wealth heterogeneity in continuous time. We extend existing analytical and numerical methods to solve the model. We calibrate the model to U.S. data and find that stochastic interest rates provide a mechanism to link earnings, income...

Differences in life expectancy between high and low socioeconomic groups are often large and have widened recently in many countries. Such longevity gaps affect the actuarial fairness and progressivity of public pension systems. However, behavioral responses to longevity and policy complicate...