This paper analyzes the effects of government debt and income taxes on consumption and saving in a world of infinitely lived households having uncertain and heterogeneous incomes. The special structure of the model allows exact aggregation across households despite incomplete markets. The effects of government debt are shown to be substantial, roughly comparable to those resulting from finite h...

OBJECTIVES This study determined the effect of income inequality on homicide rates in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. METHODS We conducted an ecological study at 2 geographical levels, municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro and administrative regions in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The association between homicide and income inequality was tested by multiple regression proc...

How business cycles affect income-related distribution of diseases and health disorders is largely unknown. We examine how the prevalence of thirty diseases and health conditions is distributed across the income spectrum using survey data collected in Iceland in 2007, 2009 and 2012. Thus, we are able to take advantage of the unusually sharp changes in economic conditions in Iceland during the G...

We study the relation between variety, market concentration, and economic growth, along different phases of economic development which entail a number of changes to the structure of production and consumption in the economy. We focus on three aspects of structural change, which are connected and are correlated to variety, market concentration, and economic growth: (i) product quality; (ii) firm...

The present study examines how the degree of progressivity of the U.S. Federal Income Tax has changed over time (from 1929 through 2009). Data from the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic Analysis is used to construct “tax concentration curves” and “income concentration curves” (of which the well known Lorenz Curve is an example) for each year during this time p...