Income Inequality: Evidence and Implications

Emmanuel Saez, E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Equitable Growth, University of California, Berkeley

December 04, 2012 — 4:10 PM
International House Auditorium, 2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley

This lecture will present evidence on income inequality gathered by a collective group of researchers in the World Top Incomes Database (click here). The database includes top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries. Saez will summarize the key… Show more empirical findings. Top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid. Most countries experienced a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the twentieth century. Top income shares do not recover in the immediate postwar decades. However, over the last thirty years, top income shares have increased substantially in English speaking countries and in India and China but not in continental European countries or Japan. Saez will also discuss the role of technology and globalization, government regulations, and tax progressivity in explaining those empirical findings.

About Emmanuel Saez

Emmanuel Saez is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Equitable Growth at the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on tax policy and inequality both from theoretical and empirical perspectives. Jointly with Thomas Piketty, he has constructed long-run historical series of income inequality in the United States that have been widely discussed in the public debate. He received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1999. He was awarded the John Bates Clark medal of the American Economic Association in 2009 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.

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