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Redistribution of income and wealth

About: Redistribution of income and wealth is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4117 publications have been published within this topic receiving 116850 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider a general model of non-cooperative provision of a public good and show that there is always a unique Nash equilibrium in the model and characterize the properties and the comparative statics of the equilibrium.

2,237 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Oliver et al. as discussed by the authors used the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data set to measure individual net worth (all wealth) and net financial assets (net worth minus housing equity and automobile value) as they artfully describe the trend of deepening economic inequality between the races since the 1980s.
Abstract: Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro. New York and Great Britain: Routledge, 1995. 242 pp. $22.95, cloth. Reviewed by Rodney D. Green, Department of Economics, Howard University. Black Wealth, White Wealth opens with an evocative racial comparison of income and wealth which reveals that although half of the top 10 earners in the U.S. are Black, virtually no Blacks are included among the wealthiest 400 Americans. Indeed, the wealth levels for those Blacks who have "made it" into the American middle class are shown to be only 15% of the wealth level of Whites in the same income category. These and other presented data suggest that if Blacks are disadvantaged relative to Whites in terms of income-and they are, earning on average less than 60% of White household incomethen they are completely eclipsed when it comes to wealth. This tale of two middle classes is part of an even bleaker tale of two unequal nations within America, a tale Oliver and Shapiro attribute to three historical processes: the racialization of state policy, the economic detour, and the sedimentation of racial inequality. These three concepts reflect, respectively, how government policy has systematically reduced Black capacity to accumulate wealth by historically limiting access to land, housing, and other wealth builders; how Blacks have been prevented from forming thriving businesses because of institutional barriers to their serving the entire domestic market, leaving Blacks in impoverished niche businesses; and how the cumulative effects of Black oppression have cemented Blacks to the bottom of society's economic hierarchy. The story begins in chapter one, in which the authors revisit Reconstruction's failure to provide the freedmen with elementary productive property-the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. They move next to a review of the Federal Housing Administration's role in deliberately blocking Black home ownership from the 1930s through the 1970s, followed by a contemporary account of how redlining and mortgage discrimination have deepened Black economic deprivation. They also review the ways in which macroeconomic forces such as globalization and deindustrialization have undermined Black economic wellbeing. For example, they point out that these forces have eliminated over half of the Black industrial jobs in the Great Lakes area in the last two decades. In chapter two, Oliver and Shapiro sketch a sociology of race and wealth in America, wrestling (perhaps too briefly) with the race/class debate and invoking Marx and Weber. With this backdrop, they offer additional historical and anecdotal evidence for the three historical processes noted above. Chapter three presents a discussion of the data constraints past researchers have experienced in attempting to study wealth distribution in the U.S. The authors surmount such difficulties themselves by using the relatively new Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data set to measure individual net worth (all wealth) and net financial assets (net worth minus housing equity and automobile value) as they artfully describe the trend of deepening economic inequality between the races since the 1980s. This theme is extended further in chapter four, in which two startling findings are highlighted: (a) though Black income has consistently hovered at around 60% of White income, Black wealth is only one-twelfth of White wealth; and (b) Black financial assets are, at the median, zero! Oliver and Shapiro go on to note that a large share of each race has no financial assets, and even larger shares of both races could not sustain lives even at poverty level for more than a few months if they lost their current income. The absolute wealth differences mentioned above conceal an even graver problem detailed in chapter five. Most Black wealth is shown to consist of home equity and automobile ownership while a substantial share of White wealth is shown to include financial assets, the key to wealth accumulation. …

1,853 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The authors in this paper extol the achievements of the capitalist entrepreneur without examining class origins and monopoly advantage, and see entrepreneurs, irrespective of class origin, as heroic figures, with the dream and will to found a private kingdom, to conquer adversity, to achieve success for its own sake, and to experience the joy of creation.
Abstract: Development economists have been preoccupied with the problem of increasing the size of the GNP pie to the relative neglect of its distribution. Despite the recent disenchantment with the viewpoint that all classes share in the benefits of industrial growth, empirical data on the distribution of income, business opportunity, and economic power are in short supply. Many of the studies on entrepreneurship and economic development, when they are not apologetics for ruthless capitalist exploitation as Paul Baran suggests, extol the achievements of the capitalist entrepreneur without examining class origins and monopoly advantage. Joseph Schumpeter sees entrepreneurs, irrespective of class origin, as heroic figures, with the dream and will to found a private kingdom, to conquer adversity, to achieve success for its own sake, and to experience the joy of creation. For Gustav Papanek (1967), the private entrepreneur, who is frugal, diligent, far-sighted, remarkably able, and willing to take political risks, is in large part responsible for the "success" of Pakistan in achieving rapid industrialization.

1,588 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets, and analyzed the trickle-down effect of capital accumulation, showing that when the rate of accumulation is sufficiently high, the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution.
Abstract: This paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets, and it analyses the trickle-down effect of capital accumulation. Moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities. Three main conclusions are obtained from this model. First, when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high, the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution. Second, even though the trickle-down mechanism can lead to a unique steady-state distribution under laissez-faire, there is room for government intervention: in particular, redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle-class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle-down process. Third, the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them: in other words, this model can generate a Kuznets curve.

1,559 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202341
202264
202188
202088
201989
2018114