IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2004.09835.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Much Income Inequality Is Too Much?

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Philippe Bouchaud

    (CFM)

Abstract

We propose a highly schematic economic model in which, in some cases, wage inequalities lead to higher overall social welfare. This is due to the fact that high earners can consume low productivity, non essential products, which allows everybody to remain employed even when the productivity of essential goods is high and producing them does not require everybody to work. We derive a relation between heterogeneities in technologies and the minimum Gini coefficient required to maximize global welfare. Stronger inequalities appear to be economically unjustified. Our model may shed light on the role of non-essential goods in the economy, a topical issue when thinking about the post-Covid-19 world.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, 2020. "How Much Income Inequality Is Too Much?," Papers 2004.09835, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2004.09835
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.09835
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jess Benhabib & Alberto Bisin & Shenghao Zhu, 2011. "The Distribution of Wealth and Fiscal Policy in Economies With Finitely Lived Agents," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 123-157, January.
    2. Ribeiro,Marcelo Byrro, 2020. "Income Distribution Dynamics of Economic Systems," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107092532.
    3. Xavier Gabaix & Jean‐Michel Lasry & Pierre‐Louis Lions & Benjamin Moll, 2016. "The Dynamics of Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 2071-2111, November.
    4. N. Gregory Mankiw, 2013. "Defending the One Percent," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    5. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2017. "Optimal Tax Progressivity: An Analytical Framework," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1693-1754.
    6. Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Mr. Andrew Berg & Mr. Charalambos G Tsangarides, 2014. "Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth," IMF Staff Discussion Notes 2014/002, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Piketty, Thomas & Saez, Emmanuel, 2012. "A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation," CEPR Discussion Papers 8946, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, 2015. "On growth-optimal tax rates and the issue of wealth inequalities," Papers 1508.00275, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2015.
    9. Jonathan David Ostry & Andrew Berg & Charalambos G Tsangarides, 2014. "Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth," IMF Staff Discussion Notes 14/02, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Chakrabarti,Bikas K. & Chakraborti,Anirban & Chakravarty,Satya R. & Chatterjee,Arnab, 2013. "Econophysics of Income and Wealth Distributions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107013445.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexandre Nimubona, 2022. "Health diplomacy to promote multisectoral participation in fighting against fragmentation and increasing budget for internalization of the health financing progress matrix in Burundi," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefan Bach, 2014. ""Reichensteuer"-Diskussion: Hintergrund und Perspektiven," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 16, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Pedro R. D. Bom & Aitor Goti, 2018. "Public Capital and the Labor Income Share," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-17, October.
    3. Saha, Anjan K. & Mishra, Vinod, 2020. "Genetic distance, economic growth and top income shares: Evidence from OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 37-47.
    4. Yuri Biondi & Simone Righi, 2019. "Inequality, mobility and the financial accumulation process: a computational economic analysis," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(1), pages 93-119, March.
    5. Palagi, Elisa & Napoletano, Mauro & Roventini, Andrea & Gaffard, Jean-Luc, 2023. "An agent-based model of trickle-up growth and income inequality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    6. İmrohoroğlu, Ayşe & Zhao, Kai, 2022. "Rising wealth inequality: Intergenerational links, entrepreneurship, and the decline in interest rate," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 86-104.
    7. Bofinger, Peter & Schnabel, Isabel & Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Wieland, Volker, 2015. "Zukunftsfähigkeit in den Mittelpunkt. Jahresgutachten 2015/16 [Focus on Future Viability. Annual Report 2015/16]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201516.
    8. Stefan Bach, 2016. "Erbschaftsteuer, Vermögensteuer oder Kapitaleinkommensteuer: Wie sollen hohe Vermögen stärker besteuert werden?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1619, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    9. Alexander Krenek & Margit Schratzenstaller, 2018. "A European Net Wealth Tax," WIFO Working Papers 561, WIFO.
    10. Ayako Saiki & Jon Frost, 2014. "How does unconventional monetary policy affect inequality? Evidence from Japan," DNB Working Papers 423, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    11. Getachew, Yoseph Y. & Turnovsky, Stephen J., 2020. "Redistribution, inequality, and efficiency with credit constraints: Implications for South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 259-277.
    12. Markus Brueckner & Daniel Lederman, 2018. "Inequality and economic growth: the role of initial income," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 341-366, September.
    13. Mohamed Ali Trabelsi & Salah Ahmed, 2021. "Economic Resilience in Developing Countries: The Role of Democracy in the Face of External Shocks," Working Papers 1499, Economic Research Forum, revised 20 Oct 2021.
    14. Andreas Fagereng & Luigi Guiso & Davide Malacrino & Luigi Pistaferri, 2020. "Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(1), pages 115-170, January.
    15. Ville-Veikko Pulkka, 2017. "A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 23(3), pages 295-311, August.
    16. Francesco Saraceno, 2014. "L'impact économique des fortes inégalités : problèmes et solutions," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(3), pages 187-200.
    17. Harmenberg, Karl, 2020. "A Simple Theory of Pareto Earnings," Working Papers 21-2020, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    18. Schünemann, Johannes & Trimborn, Timo, 2023. "Boosting taxes for boasting about houses? Status concerns in the housing market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 120-143.
    19. Caruso Raul & Antonella Biscione, 2022. "Militarization and Income Inequality in European Countries (2000–2017)," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 28(3), pages 267-285, September.
    20. Stojkoski, Viktor & Karbevski, Marko & Utkovski, Zoran & Basnarkov, Lasko & Kocarev, Ljupco, 2021. "Evolution of cooperation in networked heterogeneous fluctuating environments," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 572(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2004.09835. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.