Abstract
A rapidly growing area of economic research investigates the top of the income distribution using data from income tax records. This volume brings together studies of top incomes for twelve countries from around the world, including China, India, Japan, Argentina and Indonesia. Together with the first volume, published in 2007, the studies cover twenty two countries. They have a long time span, the earliest data relating to 1875 (for Norway), allowing recent developments to be placed in historical perspective. The volume describes in detail the source data and the methods employed. It will be an invaluable reference source for researchers in the field. Individual country chapters deal with the specific nature of the data for each of the countries, and describe the long-term evolution of top income shares. In the countries as a whole, dramatic changes have taken place at the top of the income distribution. Over the first part of the century, top income shares fell markedly. This largely took the form of a reduction in capital incomes. The different authors examine the impact of the First and Second World Wars, contrasting countries that were and were not engaged. They consider the impact of depressions and banking crises, and pay particular attention to the impact of progressive taxation. In the last 30 years, the shares of top incomes have increased markedly in the US and other Anglo-Saxon countries, reflecting the increased dispersion of earnings. The volume includes statistics on the much-discussed top pay and bonuses, providing a global perspective that discusses important differences between countries such as the lesser increase in Continental Europe. This book, together with volume 1, documents this interesting development and explores the underlying causes. The findings are brought together in a final summary chapter by Atkinson, Piketty and Saez. Contributors to this volume - Ralph Aaberge, Research Department, Statistics Norway Facundo Alvaredo, University of Oxford Anthony B. Atkinson, Nuffield College, Oxford Abhijit Banerjee, MIT Markus Jantti, Stockholm University Andrew Leigh, Australian National University Chiaki Moriguchi, Northwestern University Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics Elena Pisano, University of Rome La Sapienza Nancy Qian, Brown University Marja Riihela, Government Institute for Economic Research Jesper Roine, Stockholm School of Economics Emmanuel Saez, University of California-Berkeley Risto Sullstromand, Government Institute for Economic Research Matti Tuomala, University of Tampere Pierre van der Eng, Australian National University Daniel Waldenstrom, Research Institute of Industrial Economic
Suggested Citation
Atkinson, A. B. & Piketty, Thomas (ed.), 2010.
"Top Incomes: A Global Perspective,"
OUP Catalogue,
Oxford University Press, number 9780199286898.
Handle:
RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780199286898
Download full text from publisher
To our knowledge, this item is not available for
download. To find whether it is available, there are three
options:
1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's
web page
whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a
search for a similarly titled item that would be
available.
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:oxp:obooks:9780199286898. 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: Economics Book Marketing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.oup.com/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.