We incorporate the division of income between capital and labor into analysis on the relationship between inequality and growth. Using historical data, we document that changes in the top 1 % income shares are positively associated with subsequent growth of per capita GDP when the capital share...

Recently, some influential empirical studies found evidence in favour of a negative relationship between income inequality and economic growth, implying the conclusion that inequality reducing policies will foster economic growth. The studies have in common that they all rely on the System GMM...

Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. We construct two new metadata...

This paper is a review of the post-war literature on income distribution and development. It argues that the literature has cycled from one consensus to another, responding to emerging policy issues and new analysis. On the basis of the review, the paper identifies five areas that will command...

Governments perpetually align their policies to satisfy shifts in voters' relative demand for economic growth versus social equality. Following such shifts, increases (decreases) in government interventions lower (raise) both inequality and growth. This pattern is stronger in egalitarian...

According to increasing marginal tendency to tax avoidance, we establish a dynamic theoretical model, which illustrates an inverted U-curve relationship between economic growth and income inequality in the long run. This finding stands in sharp contrast to the Kuznets curve—whereby inequality...

After a decade of research, the effect of inequality on long-run economic growth remains unresolved, in part because researchers have treated omitted variable bias as an estimation problem rather than a deeper question of causality. In this article we argue that the key omitted variable is the...