Category Inequality
On the political economy of a basic income
The idea of a basic income – it’s generally referred to as a Guaranteed Annual Income in Canada – has been floated again. My initial reaction was that this is such a good idea that it’s hard to figure out why we don’t have it already. For some reason, there doesn’t seem to much in […]
Gini coefficients in Canada, the UK and Sweden: 1980-2005
The national statistics agencies of Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom have annual series for gini coefficients going back to 1980 or so. Although cross-country comparisons of the levels should be taken with a grain of salt, the trends in these three countries are remarkably similar: It is a Well-Known FactTM that inequality has been […]
Cross-country comparisons of inequality in market and disposable income: Policy matters
This graph is taken from a recent Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) working paper (45-page pdf): The countries are arranged in ascending order of inequality in disposable income, and the Nordic countries take four of the top five positions. What strikes me is the extent to which this is due to government policy: the Gini coefficient […]
Corporate profits are not driving the increase in the top-fractile income shares. So how would higher corporate taxes reduce inequality?
Jason Furman, guest-blogging at Free Exchange, advocates higher corporate taxes. He gets at least two important things wrong: He seems to think that corporate taxes will be entirely paid by owners of capital. It’s more likely that investors will bear approximately none of the tax. He suggests that corporate taxes will help slow the growth […]
Why focus on progressive taxes and not on progressive transfers?
Many posts in the economics blogosphere on the subject of progressive taxation today: Greg Mankiw discusses this paper, Mark Thoma points us to a WSJ article, and Brad DeLong links to Mark’s post twice (here and here). Inequality – both its level and the rate at which it has been increasing in Canada and the […]
Homogamy, inequality and social mobility
A couple of recent studies by Statistics Canada on the phenomenon of ‘assortive marriage’ have generated some comment. The point is easy enough to explain and it’s not really hard to understand: Changing role of education in the marriage market in Canada and the United States: …54% of Canadian young couples had the same educational […]
Income distributions and Mandelbrot sets
Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez and Mike Veall at McMaster University have a paper (AER version; NBER version) on how the top end of the income distribution in Canada has evolved over time. (Saez has of course been involved with many other projects using US data.) Happily for me, they’ve posted what is now my favourite excel […]
Why free tuition is like the Bush tax cut
While doing the research for my recent posts on tuition fees, I came across something from the Canadian Federation of Students called ‘Myth or Fact: A guide to common myths about the importance of reducing tuition fees’ (9-page pdf). Here’s an extract: MYTH: “Tuition fee freezes unnecessarily subsidise the cost of postsecondary education for those […]
Increasing tuition subsidies is a regressive policy
It’s budget season at the federal and provincial levels, and in its ongoing campaign to improve access to post-secondary education (PSE), the Canadian Federation of Students is campaigning for reduced tuition fees, and is taking to the streets to make its opinion known. Given what we know about this issue, it’s pretty clear that the […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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