In his 2012 book "The price of inequality", Joe Stiglitz was one of the first major economists to diagnose how dramatically income and wealth had diverged in the USA since the 1980s.
Explorers - Milestones and What Else You Should Read on Inequality
For decades, few people were interested in how equally or unequally income and wealth were distributed in the richer Western societies. For the majority of people, the gaps tended to narrow in the post-war decades of the economic miracle - the time of the upwardly mobile society. It was only with the dramatic widening of the gap, which intensified drastically during the heyday of market liberalism, that researchers began to study the phenomenon again. Since the 2010s, there has been a spate of books and studies by renowned experts, some of which are now regarded as milestones.
The Great Insights on Inequality - Milestones
Two years later, in his monumental work "Capital in the 21st Century" (2014), Thomas Piketty compiled an enormous amount of international data on income and wealth inequality.
Anthony Atkinson built on the increasingly certain diagnoses - and in his 2015 book "Inequality: What can be done?" developed a series of ideas on how to reduce inequality again.
Branko Milanovic set another milestone with his book in 2016. In "Global Inequality. A New Approach for the Age of Globalization", the former World Bank economist analysed the influence of globalisation on inequality within and between states.
In the sequel to his best-selling work, Thomas Piketty explains in 2019 why increasing inequality is not a matter of fate, but always also of ideological will.
In their book "The Triumph of Injustice", Gabriel Zucman & Emmanuel Saez explain how influential people managed to push for tax relief for the already better-off - and thus contributed to the drifting apart of income and wealth.
David Blanchflower explains in his 2019 book “Not Working” how the boom in insecure jobs - the bad jobs - has led to a sharp divergence not only in wealth but also in current incomes since the 1990s.
For a Quick Intro
Thomas Piketty
Lucas Chancel et al.
About Inequality in Germany
In Germany, even in the 2010s, there were still bitter disputes about whether there had been an alarming divergence between wealth and income in our country. But there is now a growing consensus among experts. According to this consensus, Germany is one of the most unequal countries in the industrialised world in terms of wealth, despite a highly developed welfare state.
Marcel Fratzscher
Oliver Nachtwey
Julia Friedrichs
Charlotte Bartels
Charlotte Bartels, Thilo Albers, Moritz Schularick
Martin Biewen, Miriam Sturm
Andreas Peichl et al.
Jan Goebel, Markus Grabka et al.
Forum New Economy - Focus on Inequality
Better understanding the development and causes of inequality is part of a research focus that the Forum New Economy has set since its beginning. Since 2017, a series of consecutive stud-ies have been commissioned.
Marcel Fratzscher
Charlotte Bartels, Carsten Schröder
Charlotte Bartels, Schröder
Stefan Bach, Markus Grabka, Marc Adam
Income Inequality
For a long time, it was considered a foregone conclusion what the economist Simon Kuznets had once put forward as a theory. According to Kuznets, income inequality initially increases when a country develops, but then decreases in the long run. This hypothesis has been largely disproved by empirical research, most famously by a major research project in which Thomas Piketty and his colleagues at the World Inequality Lab (WIL) processed income data for some 20 countries going back to the 18th century.
Pioneer Study
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez
Pioneer Study
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman
Pioneer Study
Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman
Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-Lebret, Thomas Piketty
Thomas Blanchet, Lucas Chancel, Amory Gethin
Christoph Lakner, Branko Milanovic
Wealth Inequality
There is still no definitive clarity on how great wealth inequality actually is in Germany. The methods used to estimate the distribution of wealth are constantly being revised. Even for the United States, probably the most intensively researched economy, there have been repeated re-visions of previous estimates: for example, Kopczuk and Saez estimated the share of the richest one per cent at 20 per cent in 2004 - Saez and Zucman arrived at a figure twice as high in 2016.
Pioneer work
Wojciech Kopczuk, Emmanuel Saez
Pioneer Study
Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman
Pioneer Study
Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman
Timm Bönke, Henrik Brinkmann
Gabriel Zucman
Stefan Bach, Andreas Thiemann, Aline Zucco
Social Dimensions of Inequality
Raj Chetty et al.
Dani Rodrik, Stephanie Stantcheva
Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn
Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick
Lucas Chancel, Philipp Bothe, Tancrède Voituriez
List of References
Books (And Other Publications)
Milestones
Atkinson, A. (2015), Inequality: What can be done?
Blanchflower, D. G. (2019). Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?
Milanovic, B. (2016) Die ungleiche Welt. Migration, das Eine Prozent und die Zukunft der Mittelschicht.
Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality: How today's divided society endangers our future.
Piketty, T. (2014). Das Kapital im 21. Jahrhundert (übersetzt von Ilse Utz und Stefan Loren-zer), Beck, München 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-67131-9.
Piketty, T. (2020) Kapital und Ideologie (aus dem Französischen von André Hansen, Enrico Heinemann, Stefan Lorenzer, Ursel Schäfer und Nastasja S. Dresler), Beck, München 2020, ISBN 978-3-406-74571-3.
Zucman, G. & Emmanuel Saez (2019). The triumph of injustice: How the rich dodge taxes and how to make them pay.
For a Quick Intro
Chancel et al. (2022): World Inequality Report 2022. https://wir2022.wid.world/.
Fratzscher, M. (2018) Myths and Facts About Inequality.
Piketty, T.(2022). Eine kurze Geschichte der Gleichheit. Aus dem Französischen von Stefan Lorenzer. C. H. Beck, München 2022.
Inequality in Germany
Albers, T., Bartels, C., & Schularick, M. (2022). Wealth and ist Distribution in Germany, 1895-2018.World Inequality Lab Working Paper N° 2022/09.
Bach, S., Thiemann, A., & Zucco, A. (2019). Looking for the missing rich: Tracing the top tail of the wealth distribution. International Tax and Public Finance, 26(6), 1234-1258.
Bach, S., Grabka, M. M., & Adam, M. C. (2021): Ungleichheit in Deutschland – Politikmaßnahmen zur Trendumkehr. Forum New Economy Working Papers, No. 5/2021.
Bartels, C. (2019). Top incomes in Germany, 1871–2014. The Journal of Economic Histo-ry, 79(3), 669-707.
Bartels, C & Schröder, C (2020a): Income, consumption and wealth inequality in Germany: Three concepts, three stories? Forum New Economy Working Papers, No. 2/2020.
Bartels, C. & Schröder, C.(2020b). The role of rental income, real estate and rents for inequality in Germany. Forum New Economy Working Papers, No. 7/2020.
Biewen, M., & Sturm, M. (2021). Why a Labour Market Boom Does Not Necessarily Bring Down Inequality: Putting Together Germany’s Inequality Puzzle. IZA Discussion Papers No. 14357/2021.
Drechsel‐Grau, M., Peichl, A., Schmid, K. D., Schmieder, J. F., Walz, H., & Wolter, S. (2022). Inequality and income dynamics in Germany. Quantitative Economics, 13(4), 1593-1635.
Friedrichs, J. (2021). Working Class.
Fratzscher, M. (2016). Verteilungskampf: Warum Deutschland immer ungleicher wird.
Fratzscher, M. (2018) Myths and Facts About Inequality. Intereconomics.
Nachtwey, O. (2016). Die Abstiegsgesellschaft: Über das Aufbegehren in der regressiven Moderne.
Studies
Income Inequality
Blanchet, T., L. Chancel, and A. Gethin (2022). Why is Europe more equal than the United States? American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 14 (4), 480–518.
Garbinti, B., J. Goupille-Lebret, and T. Piketty (2018). Income inequality in France, 1900-2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA). Journal of Public Economics 162, 63–77.
Kuznets, S. (1955). Economic growth and income inequality. The American economic review, 45(1), 1-28.
Lakner, C. and B. Milanovic (2016). Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession. World Bank Economic Review 30(2), 203-232.
Milanovic, B. (2022). The three eras of global inequality, 1820-2020 with a focus on the past thirty years. Stone Center Working Paper Series. no. 59, November 2022.
Piketty, Thomas und Emmanuel Saez (2003): Income inequality in the United States, 1913 – 1998. The Quarterly Journal of Economics (118) 1, 1–41.
Piketty, T., E. Saez, and G. Zucman (2018). Distributional National Accounts: Methods and estimates for the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(2), 553-609.
Wealth Inequality
Bach, S., Thiemann, A., & Zucco, A. (2019). Looking for the missing rich: Tracing the top tail of the wealth distribution. International Tax and Public Finance, 26(6), 1234-1258.
Brönke, T., & Brinkmann, H. (2017). Privates Vermögen und Vermögensförderung in Deutschland. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung.
Kopczuk, W. & Saez, E. (2004). Top wealth shares in the United States, 1916-2000: Evidence from estate tax returns, National Tax Journal 57(2), 445–487.
Piketty, T. & Zucman, G. (2014). Capital is back: Wealth-income ratios in rich countries, 1700-2010, Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(3), 1255–1310.
Saez, E. & Zucman, G. (2016). Wealth inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from capitalized income tax data. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(2), 519–578.
Zucman, G. (2019), ‘Global wealth inequality’. Annual Review of Economics 11, 109–138.
Social Dimensions of Inequality
Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn (2017). The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. Journal of Economic Literature, 55 (3): 789-865.
Chancel, L., Bothe, P., & Voituriez, T. (2023). Climate Inequality Report: Fair Taxes for a Sustainable Future in the Global South. World Inequality Lab Study 2023/1.
Chetty, R., Grusky, D., Hell, M., Hendren, N., Manduca, R., & Narang, J. (2017). The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940. Science, 356(6336), 398-406.
Derenoncourt, E., Kim, C. H., Kuhn, M., & Schularick, M. (2022). Wealth of two nations: The US racial wealth gap, 1860-2020. Working Paper No. w30101. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Rodrik, D., & Stantcheva, S. (2021). Fixing capitalism’s good jobs problem. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 37(4), 824-837.