Re-estimating national wealth inequality with incorporating the rich lists in China

Global coordination for the preservation of a common good, such as climate, is one of the most prominent challenges of modern societies. In this manuscript, we use the framework of evolutionary game theory to investigate whether a polycentric structure of multiple small-scale agreements provides a viable solution to solve global dilemmas as climate change governance. We review a stochastic model which incorporates a threshold game of collective action and the idea of risky goods, capturing essential features unveiled in recent experiments. We show how reducing uncertainty both in terms of the perception of disaster and in terms of goals induce a transition to cooperation. Taking into account wealth inequality, we explore the impact of the homophily, potentially present in the network of influence of the rich and the poor, in the different contributions of the players. Finally, we discuss the impact of polycentric sanctioning institutions, showing how such a scenario also proves to be more efficient than a single global institution.

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How to Boost the Payoff from Innovation While Shrinking its Destructive Side Effects

The Business History Review ◽

10.1017/s000768052100101x ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 95 (4) ◽

pp. 823-840

Author(s):

Robert J. Gordon

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Growth ◽

Side Effects ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Profit Margins ◽

Income Share ◽

The Rich ◽

Human Costs ◽

Deaths Of Despair

Gather a group of economists together and ask what most concerns them, and a wide variety of topics would soon emerge: slowing economic growth in the rich nations, the inability of many poor nations to converge toward the rich, rising income and wealth inequality, the increasing dominance of superstar firms, growing profit margins and the decline in labor's income share, globalization and the human costs of outsourcing, deaths of despair, and the threat of climate change. Decade after decade, numerous books have been written about each of these issues. But here we have in one compact package a blockbuster book that deals with all of them.

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The Impact of Unconventional Monetary Policy on Gendered Wealth Inequality

Papeles de Europa ◽

10.5209/pade.63637 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 175-186 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Brigitte Young

Keyword(s):

Monetary Policy ◽

Asset Prices ◽

Household Finance ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Unconventional Monetary Policy ◽

Distributional Effects ◽

Monetary Policies ◽

The Rich ◽

The Impact ◽

Central Bankers

Unconventional monetary policy was implemented as a result of the financial crisis and resulted in rising asset prices in the stock markets. While the increase in asset prices is not exclusively triggered by unconventional monetary policy, central bankers accept that unconventional monetary policy has resulted in distributional effects on wealth, and that these are not negligible. What is missing are studies analyzing whether these non-standard monetary policies have different distributional effects on women and men. The intent of the paper is to interrogate whether unconventional monetary policy of central banks has a gender bias that operates in favor of men as gender and against women as gender. Relying on insights from feminist economics, the paper uses the results of the ECB Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) of 62,000 household across 15 euro-area countries. While the results are tentative, they show an asymmetric distributional gendered impact. Since the rich own more assets than the poor, and since monetary easing works in part by raising asset prices, these unconventional policies may unintentionally benefit the wealthier quintile (on average more male) at the expense of the poorer strata of society (on average more female).

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A new approach to social inequality: inequality of income and wealth in South Korea

The Journal of Chinese Sociology ◽

10.1186/s40711-020-00126-7 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kwang-Yeong Shin

Keyword(s):

Income Inequality ◽

South Korea ◽

Social Inequality ◽

Employment Status ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

New Approach ◽

Income Groups ◽

The Rich ◽

The Relationship ◽

Significant Factors

Abstract This paper attempts to provide a new approach to social inequality, focusing on income and wealth inequality and the relationship between income inequality and wealth inequality. With an analysis of the data linking survey data with administrative data in South Korea, this paper reports that wealth, employment status, family size, and education are significant contributors to income inequality. However, income and loans are the two most significant factors contributing to wealth inequality. Income derived from economic activity and loans based on the leverage in the financial market have exacerbated wealth inequality as higher income groups tend to utilize more loans in the financialized economy, widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Wealth inequality has different dynamics from income inequality, mediated through leverage in South Korea.

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The Wealth of Nations: International Judgments Regarding Actual and Ideal Resource Distributions

Current Directions in Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0963721418762377 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 27 (5) ◽

pp. 357-362 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

William F. Arsenio

Keyword(s):

Age Groups ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Assessment Methods ◽

Study Methods ◽

National Wealth ◽

Resource Distributions ◽

Wealth Of Nations

How much wealth inequality do people think is ideal, and how does that compare with the inequality they perceive in their society? Recent research on individuals’ judgments about the distribution of national wealth suggests that there are both international commonalties and nation-specific patterns in these cognitions. This review describes several of these major findings and how some of them vary as a function of study methods. The evidence summarized suggests that U.S. participants may underestimate wealth inequality but that this underestimation is not found in many other countries. Additionally, individuals who perceive greater wealth inequality have more negative views of their societies and are more supportive of policies aimed at redistributing resources; these connections, however, have been specific to one method of assessing wealth cognitions. Finally, across nations, assessment methods, and age groups, studies show that individuals prefer a more egalitarian distribution of national wealth than they believe exists.

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The Robin Hood Index Adjusted for Negatives and Equivalised Incomes

Journal of Official Statistics ◽

10.2478/jos-2021-0044 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 37 (4) ◽

pp. 1047-1058

Author(s):

Marion van den Brakel ◽

Reinder Lok

Keyword(s):

Gini Coefficient ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Income Transfer ◽

Income Share ◽

Robin Hood ◽

Inequality Measures ◽

The Poor ◽

The Gini Coefficient ◽

The Rich ◽

Original Index

Abstract Indisputable figures on income and wealth inequality are indispensable for politics, society and science. Although the Gini coefficient is the most common measure of inequality, the straightforward concept of the Robin Hood index (namely, the income share that has to be transferred from the rich to the poor to make everyone equally well off) makes it a more attractive measure for the general public. In a distribution with many negative values – particularly wealth distributions – the Robin Hood index can take on values larger than 1, indicating an intuitively impossible income transfer of more than 100%. This article proposes a method to normalise the Robin Hood index. In contrast to the original index, the normalised Robin Hood index always takes on values between 0 and 1 and ends up as the original index in a distribution without negatives. As inequality measures are commonly applied to equivalised income, we also introduce a method for adequately transferring equivalised incomes from the rich to the poor within the framework of the (normalised) Robin Hood index. An empirical application shows the effect of normalisation for the Robin Hood index, and compares it to the normalisation of the Gini coefficient from previous research.

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Wealth Defense and the Complicity of Liberal Democracy

Wealth ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479827008.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jeffrey A. Winters

Keyword(s):

Government Policy ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

The United States ◽

Protective Services ◽

Historical View ◽

Wealth Concentration ◽

The Social ◽

The Us ◽

The Rich ◽

Modern Era

Sustaining extreme material inequality is neither easy nor automatic. It requires constant and active strategies of wealth defense by the rich, including using their money to hire protective services (which in the twentieth century took the form of a specialized wealth defense industry). An important transformation over the centuries was the movement of violence out of the hands of the rich in exchange for their support for impersonal institutions of coercion whose first priority has been the defense of property rights that make great fortunes viable politically. This chapter focuses on the changing politics and power that undergird wealth stratification. The analysis takes a deep historical view of the social tensions inherent in wealth concentration, starting with the origins of wealth inequality, and continuing with a discussion of the strategies and politics of wealth defense as personal fortunes grew in scale and as threats and predations multiplied. The second half of the chapter focuses on the modern era through an examination of the United States from the 1780s to the present. The US case demonstrates that for democracy and extreme wealth stratification to be compatible, democracy must first be structurally impaired and ideologically reframed to hinder egalitarian impulses from becoming government policy.

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Do the Rich Get Richer in the Stock Market? Evidence from India

American Economic Review: Insights ◽

10.1257/aeri.20180158 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 225-240 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

John Y. Campbell ◽

Tarun Ramadorai ◽

Benjamin Ranish

Keyword(s):

Stock Market ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Individual Investors ◽

Risky Assets ◽

Stock Portfolios ◽

The Rich

We use data on Indian stock portfolios to show that return heterogeneity is the primary contributor to increasing inequality of wealth held in risky assets by Indian individual investors. Return heterogeneity increases equity wealth inequality through two main channels, both of which are related to the prevalence of undiversified accounts that own relatively few stocks. First, some undiversified portfolios randomly do well, while others randomly do poorly. Second, larger accounts diversify more effectively and thereby earn higher average log returns even though their average simple returns are no higher than those of smaller accounts. (JEL D14, D31, G11, O16)

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National level wealth inequality and socioeconomic inequality in adolescent mental wellbeing

European Journal of Public Health ◽

10.1093/eurpub/ckaa165.337 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽

Author(s):

M Dierckens ◽

D Weinberg ◽

Y Huang ◽

F Elgar ◽

I Moor ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Satisfaction ◽

Income Inequality ◽

National Level ◽

National Income ◽

Somatic Symptoms ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Socioeconomic Inequalities ◽

Mental Wellbeing ◽

National Wealth ◽

Level Data

Abstract Background Previous research established a positive association between national income inequality and socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent health, but little is known about the extent to which national level inequalities in accumulated financial resources (i.e. wealth) are associated with these health inequalities. Therefore, we examined the association between national wealth inequality and income inequality and socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent mental wellbeing. Methods Data were from 17 countries participating in three successive waves (2010, 2014 and 2018) of the cross-sectional Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. We combined individual-level data on adolescents' life satisfaction, psychological and somatic symptoms and socioeconomic status (SES) with country-level data on income and wealth inequality (n = 244771). We performed time-series analysis on a pooled sample of 48 country/year groups. Results Higher levels of national wealth inequality were associated with fewer average psychological and somatic symptoms, while higher levels of national income inequality were associated with more psychological and somatic symptoms. No associations between either national wealth inequality or income inequality and life satisfaction were found. Smaller differences in somatic symptoms between higher and lower SES groups were found in countries with higher levels of national wealth inequality. In contrast, larger differences in psychological symptoms and life satisfaction (but not somatic symptoms) between higher and lower SES groups were found in countries with higher levels of national income inequality. Conclusions Although both national wealth and income inequality are associated with (socioeconomic inequalities in) adolescent mental wellbeing, associations are in opposite directions. Further research is warranted to gain better understanding in the role of national wealth inequality on (socioeconomic inequalities in) adolescent health. Key messages This is one of the first studies to examine if socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent mental wellbeing are associated with national wealth inequality independently from national income inequality. Opposing effects of national wealth inequality and income inequality on socioeconomic inequalities in adolescents’ mental wellbeing warrant further research before policy recommendations can be made.

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The inequality debate: the neglected role of residential sorting

Policy Quarterly ◽

10.26686/pq.v11i2.4535 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Philip S Morrison

Keyword(s):

Spatial Separation ◽

Wealth Inequality ◽

Location Decisions ◽

Neighbourhood Effects ◽

Homogeneous Groups ◽

The Social ◽

Residential Sorting ◽

Scant Attention ◽

The Rich

One of the curious features of recent writing on income inequality is the scant attention paid to the geography of inequality, to the spatial separation of rich and poor. While it is recognised that social capital can be enhanced by residential sorting into more homogeneous groups, there is longstanding concern that this same residential sorting may exacerbate existing inequality by inhibiting the social mobility of the poor (Turner and Fortuny, 2009). The perspective I want to advance here differs from the standard ‘neighbourhood effects’ literature by focusing not on those living in poor neighbourhoods, but instead on the benefits residential sorting may yield for the rich – the way in which location decisions redistribute income to the upper end of the income distribution and hence further income (and wealth) inequality.

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