Why are some people wealthy while others are poor? To what extent can governments affect
inequality? Which instruments should they use? Answering these questions requires …

In his widely discussed book 'Fault Lines'(2010), Raghuram Rajan argues that many low
and middle income consumers have reduced their saving and increased debt since income …

We study business cycle variation in individual earnings risk using a confidential and very
large data set from the US Social Security Administration. Contrary to past research, we find …

The recent debates about the role of income inequality in causing the “Great Recession” are
surveyed along different dimensions. First, we review the controversy about the “Rajan …

This article reviews macroeconomic models with heterogeneous households. A key
question for the relevance of these models concerns the degree to which markets are …

We document trends in the volatility in earnings and household incomes between 1985 and
2005 in three different data sources: administrative earnings records, the Survey of Income …

In this paper, we put into perspective the recent literature which points to inequality as a
possible cause of credit bubbles, by reintegrating it into a more general analysis on the two …

While in the data wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of rich people and
the saving rate of the rich is high, many models used for quantitative policy evaluation fail to …

We use a new, large, and confidential panel of tax returns to study the persistent-versus-
transitory nature of rising inequality in male labor earnings and in total household income …

While many studies have documented the long-term trend of increasing income inequality in
the US economy, there has been less focus on income mobility and the potential opportunity …