This paper examines the dynamics of Keynesian models that incorporate feedback effects from the labor market to income distribution, investment, aggregate demand and output. A baseline version of the model can generate endogenous growth cycles, but cumulative divergence and economic collapse...

This paper examines the distribution of the gasoline tax burden in the presence of increased electric vehicle adoption. Automobile manufacturers and even some states have ambitious goals to phase out gas-powered cars. However, in spite of these plans, the primary source of automobile...

This paper is part of a dialogue with Blair Fix on how inflation redistributes income between creditors and workers and the way in which monetary policy affects this process. In his 2023 paper, 'Inflation! The Battle Between Creditors and Workers', Fix shows, first, that the impact of U.S....

Given that the Lorenz curve is widely used for analyzing income distribution and inequality, this study introduces an alternative functional form for the Lorenz curve that is constructed based on the weighted average of the exponential function and the functional form implied by Pareto...

This paper examines the impact of labour market and product market reforms on income inequality for 25 OECD countries, using the local projections approach and updates of the reform indicators put together by Duval et al. (2018) until 2020. Our results suggest that both types of (endogenized)...

The German Federal Government has expanded subsidies for employees with low gross wages (midijob employees) as of January 1, 2023, and raised the upper earnings limit to 2,000 euros. As a result, around 6.2 million midijob employees will benefit from paying reduced social security contributions...

Basic income benefits cover recipients' actual heating expenses as long as they are not unusually high. In contrast, their electricity expenses are only covered via a lump sum at the standard rate. Thus, basic income recipients have weaker incentives for reducing their heating expenses than for...

We analyse how changes in international trade integration affect productivity and the functional income distribution. To account for endogeneity, we construct a leave-out measure for international trade integration for country-industry pairs using international input-output tables. First, we...

This study examines the effect of GDP per capita on the Gini index, which measures income concentration, in Colombia. The methodology used is an econometric analysis of time series with data extracted from the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. The econometric results suggest...

As country after country in the European Union is called to respond to the current challenge of our time - high inflation and declining real wages - governments must engage in a transformative agenda and go beyond emergency energy vouchers and income support cashtransfers. And if the goal is to...

Proponents of a basic income (BI) claim that it could bring significant reductions in financial poverty, on top of many other benefits, including greatly reduced administrative complexity and cost. Using microsimulation analysis in a comparative two-country setting, we show that the potential...

Studies have shown that the previously growing inequality in China has stabilized and even declined since 2008 (Kanbur et al., 2021), nevertheless, the drivers of the latest trans-formation in income inequality remain to be unraveled. We address this research gap by examining the changes in the...

Tax administration statistics now provide considerably more complete and reliable measures of South African personal income and its distribution than the available household or other survey sources. However, there are difficulties in using tax data across time, as both policy and reporting...

In this paper we explore the links between international migration and income inequality. After presenting a simple model which considers the role of income distribution in individual decisions to migrate, we estimate a set of models on the determinants of yearly bilateral migration from a very...

A substantial amount of research has been conducted examining inequality in South Africa using multiple data sources. We provide an overview of this research in this paper. Furthermore, we use nationally representative survey data to estimate income and consumption inequality in South Africa...

This study evaluates which type of benefit-a universal benefit, a proxy mean-tested benefit, or a categorical benefit- better cushions the poverty effects of income shocks in a developing economy. We compare the effectiveness of the three benefit schemes on poverty first conceptually and then by...

Following the winter recession and stagnation in the second quarter of 2023, the economic upswing is proceeding at a sluggish pace, contrary to expectations over the summer. Weak foreign demand and ongoing inflation have proven to be slowing economic growth. For the time being, private...

This study makes use of Mozambican social accounting matrices (SAMs) for the years 2007 and 2019, which we compare to uncover structural changes. Our findings reflect the significant short- and long-term challenges that Mozambican policy makers face. Broad-based dynamic change and structural...

In the distributive analysis, the constant relative inequality aversion utility function is a standard tool for ethical judgements of income distributions. The sole parameter ε of this function expresses a society’s aversion to inequality. However, the profession has not committed to the...

Supermultiplier growth models show that higher autonomous spending leads to stronger economic growth, implying that greater government spending can boost economic activity (Freitas and Serrano, 2015). However, several authors highlighted the limits of this strategy, arguing that increased...

The present paper attempts to demonstrate that finding an appropriate trade-off between direct and indirect taxes can help smooth policy makers’ way through reconciling the contradictory notions of equity and efficiency. Our theoretical and empirical analysis is based on the assumption that...

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of tax changes on the cross-sectional distribution of disposable income in the United States using a narrative identification approach. I distinguish between changes in personal and corporate income taxes and quantify the distributional effects on...

High levels of economic inequality may lead to lower economic growth and can have negative social and political impacts. Recent empirical research shows that income and wealth inequalities in Eastern Europe since the fall of socialism increased significantly more than previously suggested....

This paper (i) examines the role of income distribution in the determination of the average saving rate and the growth process in dual and mature economies, and (ii) revisits the Pasinetti and neo-Pasinetti theorems. The profit share may in uence saving because of differences in the saving rates...

Recent research on Nigeria indicates declining income inequality. In contrast, anecdotal evidence suggests that only the upper class has benefited from economic growth in Nigeria overtime. The disconnect between these findings and anecdotal evidence, and the limitation in how inequality was...

We investigate whether rising income disparity contributes to the proliferation of shadow economic activities in Nigeria. The study uses data from 1991 to 2018 and adopts the Auto-regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) cointegration approach to study the effects of income inequality on the shadow...

Economic zones can be powerful drivers of economic growth in developing countries. However, less is known about their distributional impact on the local society. This paper provides empirical evidence from Indonesian provinces on the relationship between economic zones and within-province income...