IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03470224.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rising inequality in the EU : the elephant in the room

Author

Listed:
  • Xavier Timbeau

    (OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po)

  • Lars Anderson
  • Christophe Blot

    (OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po)

  • Jérôme Creel

    (OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po)

  • Andrew Watt

Abstract

Rising inequality is the elephant in the European room: everybody knows it is there and that it is an obvious problem, but no one wants to either discuss the problem or address it. Macroeconomic issues have taken the front seat, andinequality might be dropped in the conversation when it has relevance from a macroeconomic perspective: maybe we should reduce inequality to fight secular stagnation (Fitoussi and Saraceno, 2011), especially because inequality can be self-reinforcing through secular stagnation; maybe we should reduce inequality toenhance growth in a world of credit-constraint households, because growth is the final goal of our policies (Birdsall et al. 1996). The fact that, maybe, we should aim for socio-economic equality for itself and not for some other macroeconomic objective seems to have disappeared in th epresence of other urgencies. Paradoxically, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century has spurred a global debate, but not a European one. The Capital is on everybody's lips from New-York to Hong-Kong through Rio, but not in Brussels—although it is in everybody's mind, hence the Elephant in the Room. But, perhaps it is so because Piketty has placed attention on high and very high income, which is less of a subject in stagnatingeconomies.

Suggested Citation

  • Xavier Timbeau & Lars Anderson & Christophe Blot & Jérôme Creel & Andrew Watt, 2015. "Rising inequality in the EU : the elephant in the room," Post-Print hal-03470224, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03470224
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03470224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03470224/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inequality; UE;

    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:hal:journl:hal-03470224. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.