Unequal = Indebted

Michael Kumhof (1) , Romain Rancière (1, 2, 3)

1 IMF - International Monetary Fund
2 PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques
3 PSE - Paris School of Economics

In current research we therefore extend the work reported in "Leveraging Inequality" (F&D, December 2010), which dealt with only the United States, to include an open-economy dimension. We find (see Chart 1) that what unites the experiences of the main deficit countries is a steep increase in income inequality over recent decades, as measured by the share of income going to the richest 5 percent of the country's income distribution

Domains: Economics and Finance

Michael Kumhof, Romain Rancière. Unequal = Indebted. Finance & Development, 2011, pp.25-27. ⟨halshs-00754519⟩