The distribution of income in the United States is decidedly more uneven than in countries across the European Union. But the underlying cause of that inequality is not so much a lower level of redistribution by the US government, but instead the much higher level of US income inequality before taxes and transfer payments. Indeed … Continue reading Alternative Choices for Labor Market Institutions
I am now in my 34th year as Managing Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The JEP is published by the American Economic Association, which decided about a decade ago–to my delight–that the journal would be freely available on-line, from the current issue all the way back to the first issue. You can download … Continue reading Fall 2020 Journal of Economic Perspectives Online
The “merger guidelines” that have been published by the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice since 1969–with updates happening every 10-15 years–serve an unusual role. They are not federal regulations like, say, rules about what level of pollutants can be emitted from the Environmental Protection Administration. Instead, the merger guidelines seek to … Continue reading Antitrust and the Consumer Welfare Goal
The editors of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, Akshath Jitendranath and Marina Uzunova, have prepared \”What Egalitarianism Requires: An Interview with John Roemer\” (Winter 2020, 13: 2, pp. 127–176). As they note in the introduction: \”Roemer’s work spans the domains of economics, philosophy, and political science, and, most often, applies the tools of … Continue reading An Interview with John Roemer on Inequality of Opportunity
It’s hard to get data on the investment patterns of the very wealthy. Many surveys are intended to cover the entire population, from to bottom, so they don’t offer many data points for looking at the behavior of the top 1% or the top 0.1%. In addition, any survey about economic facts, like personal wealth, … Continue reading How Do the Very Wealthy Invest Differently?
Studies of income inequality use different measures of income, and unsurprisingly, reach some different results. Steven J. Rose lays out some differences in the major studies looking at changes in inequality of US income since 1979 in \”How Different Studies Measure Income Inequality in the US,\” just by the Urban Institute (December 2018). This table … Continue reading US Income Inequality Through the Prism of Different Studies
I have been the Managing Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives since the first issue in Summer 1987. The JEP is published by the American Economic Association, which decided about a decade ago–to my delight–that the journal would be freely available on-line, from the current issue all the way back to the first issue. You can download … Continue reading Fall 2021 Journal of Economic Perspectives Available Online
Interest rates have been declining for several decades, both in the US economy and around the world. Why has this happened, what problems is it causing, and what monetary and fiscal policy responses might be appropriate? Elga Bartsch, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Giancarlo Corsetti and Xavier Debrun tackle many of these issues in \”It\’s All in the … Continue reading Facing the Long-Term Problem of Low Interest Rates
The \”progressivity\” of a tax refers to whether those with higher incomes pay a higher share of income in taxes than those with lower incomes. The federal income tax is progressive in this sense. However, other federal taxes like the payroll taxes that support Social Security are regressive, rather than progressive, because it applies only … Continue reading What Gets Counted When Measuring US Tax Progressivity
How might one define the super-rich and how might the government tax them? Florian Scheuer tackles these questions in \”Taxing the superrich: Challenges of a fair tax system\” (UBS Center Public Paper #9, November 2020). Also available at the the website is a one-hour video webinar by Scheuer on the subject. Those who want a … Continue reading The Super-rich and How to Tax Them
