This class offers a comprehensive perspective on the role that distributional analysis plays in comparative economic studies. It begins discussing the dynamics of income inequality and poverty during the transition from planned, to market economies in eighteen formerly socialist countries. A bird-eye view on inequality dynamics across the XXth Century in the west is, then, presented. Specifically, an emphasis is put on (i) the production of novel data and statistics that have allowed the comparative analysis of inequality dynamics across countries and epochs, and (ii) the discovery of novel stylized facts concerning the evolution of income and wealth inequality in a vast number of countries. The trade-off between institutional specificity and general laws of capitalism is also highlighted. After introducing the subject matter, the class branches into four parts. The first part illustrates the basic concepts and tools for distributional analysis. The second part focuses specifically on income and wealth inequality dynamics from the 1980s until today in the western world. As economic systems become more economically interconnected, the study of global inequality gains relevance: this is the focus of the third part of the class. Finally, the fourth part shows the emergence of new forms of capitalism. This conclusive section hinges on recent studies on compositional inequality in terms of capital and labor.

 

Introduction: Why is distributional analysis important for comparative economics?

 

The case of transition economies (Atkinson and Micklewright, 1992, Milanovic, 1998)
Inequality dynamics across the XXth Century: new data and statistics for distributional comparative analysis (Piketty, 2014)
	New theoretical perspectives on the distribution of income and wealth among individuals (Stiglitz, 2016)
	Institutional specificity or general laws? (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2015)
 

Part I: Concept and tools for distributional analysis

 

Income and wealth: concept and theory
	Mathematical tools for distributional analysis (Atkinson, 1970, Cowell and Flachaire, 2014)
Data for distributional analysis: survey vs tax data (Lustig, 2020)
 

Part II: Income and Wealth Inequality Dynamics, 1980-2020 

 

North America and Western Europe (Saez and Zucman, 2020, Blanchet et al., 2019)
 

This class offers a comprehensive perspective on the role that distributional analysis plays in comparative economic studies. It begins discussing the dynamics of income inequality and poverty during the transition from planned, to market economies in eighteen formerly socialist countries. A bird-eye view on inequality dynamics across the XXth Century in the west is, then, presented. Specifically, an emphasis is put on (i) the production of novel data and statistics that have allowed the comparative analysis of inequality dynamics across countries and epochs, and (ii) the discovery of novel stylized facts concerning the evolution of income and wealth inequality in a vast number of countries. The trade-off between institutional specificity and general laws of capitalism is also highlighted. After introducing the subject matter, the class branches into four parts. The first part illustrates the basic concepts and tools for distributional analysis. The second part focuses specifically on income and wealth inequality dynamics from the 1980s until today in the western world. As economic systems become more economically interconnected, the study of global inequality gains relevance: this is the focus of the third part of the class. Finally, the fourth part shows the emergence of new forms of capitalism. This conclusive section hinges on recent studies on compositional inequality in terms of capital and labor.

 

Introduction: Why is distributional analysis important for comparative economics?

 

The case of transition economies (Atkinson and Micklewright, 1992, Milanovic, 1998)
Inequality dynamics across the XXth Century: new data and statistics for distributional comparative analysis (Piketty, 2014)
	New theoretical perspectives on the distribution of income and wealth among individuals (Stiglitz, 2016)
	Institutional specificity or general laws? (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2015)
 

Part I: Concept and tools for distributional analysis

 

Income and wealth: concept and theory
	Mathematical tools for distributional analysis (Atkinson, 1970, Cowell and Flachaire, 2014)
Data for distributional analysis: survey vs tax data (Lustig, 2020)
 

Part II: Income and Wealth Inequality Dynamics, 1980-2020 

 

North America and Western Europe (Saez and Zucman, 2020, Blanchet et al., 2019)
Post-Socialist Europe (Bandelj and Mahutga, 2010)
Latin America (López-Calva and Lustig, 2010)
	Russia, India and China (Novokmet et al., 2018, Yang et al., 2019, Chi, 2012)
 

Part III: Inequality in a global perspective

 

Global inequality studies: concept and measures (Milanovic, 2006, Anand and Segal, 2008)
The rise of the global middle class (Lakner and Milanovic, 2015)
	Global wealth and land inequalities (Davies et al., 2008, 2017, Bauluz et al., 2020)
 

Part IV: New Forms of Distributional Capitalism

 

"Capitalism, Alone" (Milanovic, 2019)
	Compositional inequality and Homoploutia: concept and measurement (Ranaldi, 2021a, Berman and Milanovic, 2020)
Capitalist systems and income inequality (Ranaldi and Milanovic, 2021)
	The evolution of income composition inequality in Italy, 1989-2016 (Iacono and Ranaldi, 2021)
	The rise of a new aristocracy in the US (Berman and Milanovic, 2020)
	Towards a global multiple-sources-of-income economy? (Ranaldi, 2021b)
 

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capitalism. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29.

 

Anand, S. and Segal, P. (2008). What do we know about global income inequality?

Journal of Economic Literature, 46:57–94.

 

Atkinson, A. (1970). On the measurement of inequality. Journal of Economic Theory, 2.

 

Atkinson, A. B. and Micklewright, J. (1992). Economic transformation in eastern europe

and the distribution of income. Cambridge University Press.

 

Bandelj, N. and Mahutga, M. C. (2010). How socio-economic change shapes income

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Bauluz, L., Govind, Y., and Novokmet, P. (2020). Global land inequality. WIDWorking

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Berman, Y. and Milanovic, B. (2020). Homoploutia: Top labor and capital incomes

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