Preliminary Inequality Reading List

A Preliminary Inequality Reading List:

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (2004), "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-2002" http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezOUP04US.pdf

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (2002), "The Inheritance of Inequality" http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/intergen.pdf

Lisa Barrow and Cecilia Rouse (2005), "Does College Still Pay?" http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1097&context=ev

Paul Krugman (1993), "The Rich, the Right, and the Facts" http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/therich.html

Paul Krugman (1992), "Inequality and Ignorance" http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/IgnoranceInequality.html

Paul Krugman (1996), "The Spiral of Inequality" http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1996/11/krugman.html

Paul Krugman (2002), "For Richer" http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1996/11/krugman.html

Paul Krugman (2006), "Graduates vs. Oligarchs" http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/48/17995

Thomas Lemieux (2004), "Residual Wage Inequality: A Re-Examination" http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/webfac/saez/e291_s04/lemieux.pdf

Orley Ashenfelter and Cecilia Rouse (1998), "Schooling, Intelligence, and Income in America: Cracks in the Bell Curve." November, 1998. http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/407.pdf

Cecilia Rouse (1997), "Further Estimates of the Economic Return to Schooling from a New Sample of Twins." July, 1997. http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/388revised.pdf

Claudia Goldin and Ceci Rouse (2000), "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of Blind Auditions on Female Musicians,"American Economic Review, 90, no. 4 (September 2000): 715-741. http://www.jstor.org/view/00028282/ap000014/00a00030/0?currentResult=00028282%2bap000014%2b00a00030%2b0%2c01%2b20000900%2b9995%2b79999099&searchID=8dd55340.10893069360&frame=noframe&sortOrder=SCORE&userID=8070c9f8@princeton.edu/018dd5534000501264bc2&dpi=3&viewContent=Article&config=jstor

Mark Thoma reads Edward Bellamy on inequality: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/12/how_inequality_.html

Bookmarks on del.icio.us tagged with "inequality" by jbdelong: http://del.icio.us/jbdelong/inequality

Comments

[Fifi]

Krugman's Graduates vs. Oligarchs outlines the real problem for social stability. He could have also titled that article "Technocrats vs. Oligarchs".

Other forms of inequalities can be kept stable through more or less authoritarian methods, but when the ruling class loses its bourgeoisie, this is the making of revolutions.

To be bold and hyperbolic, I'd say that America is in a pre-revolutionary situation. Who will be the next FDR to defuse it? Who will save the oligarchy from itself?

[gordon]

Discussions about inequality often lead on to discussions about social mobility. Here are a few references on this issue which some might find useful:

Corak M. (ed) 2004 Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America. CUP

Hertz., T. Understanding Mobility in America http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1579981

Aronson,D. and Mazumder,B (2005) Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the US, 1940-2000 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Working Paper# WP 2005-12

Machin, S. (2004) Educational Systems and Intergenerational Mobility. Draft Paper Prepared for CESifo/PEPG Conference, Munich, September 2004
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/events/Munich/PEPG-04-18Machin.pdf

[MQ]

But...but...you've left Alan Reynolds off the reading list!

[Aniruddha G. Kulkarni]

Very impressive list. That sane voice of Krugman unsurprisingly dominates.

Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi on inequality are very relevant today.

[Bruce Western]

The demographic piece of this is missing. How about Ellwood and Jencks's excellent review article, on "The Uneven Spread of Single Parent Families." It may seem a bit narrow gauge given your topic, but the implications are broad.

[Steve Peterson]

For a philosophical discussion of inequality and what types of inequality we think might matter more or less, there's Larry Temkin's book _Inequality_:

http://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Oxford-Ethics-Larry-Temkin/dp/0195111494/ref=ed_oe_p/102-3926348-1562514

[save_the_rustbelt]

The Barrow and Rouse link does not seem to be working.

[anon]

Here's another Krugman article:

http://www.slate.com/id/1915/

[malcolm]

The Barrow and Rouse link is still
not working.

[Jeffrey Harris]

The day after the conservative economist and White House adviser Paul Bernanke worried publicly about inequality in Iowa, the Catoist Alan Reynolds published a long article in the WSJ claiming that both Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez and the CBO were way off because they did not include IRAs and other investment wealth in their income statistics, and that therefore there has neen no increase in inequality in recent years. Now, given that Alan Reynolds's last article in the WSJ on this was demolished on this blog (for cherrypicking, and hilariously, misreading a table in Piketty and Saez), I am waiting for a an analysis here. I am not an economist and I don't have access to all the fundamental data on this topic that Brad and colleagues do, but I am a numbers guy (physics) so I groove on these things. I hope that they will take this one on. Very best regards, JHH