Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (13)
- Economics (10)
- Income Distribution (6)
- Law and Economics (6)
- Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration (5)
-
- Sociology (5)
- Law and Society (4)
- Tax Law (4)
- Antitrust and Trade Regulation (3)
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (3)
- Inequality and Stratification (3)
- Social Welfare (3)
- Social Welfare Law (3)
- Arts and Humanities (2)
- Behavioral Economics (2)
- Health Law and Policy (2)
- Law and Gender (2)
- Taxation-Federal (2)
- Administrative Law (1)
- Banking and Finance Law (1)
- Constitutional Law (1)
- Ethics and Political Philosophy (1)
- Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (1)
- Health Policy (1)
- Insurance Law (1)
- Jurisprudence (1)
- Labor and Employment Law (1)
- Law and Race (1)
- Philosophy (1)
- Institution
- Publication Year
Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Law
Income Inequality, Progressive Taxation And Tax Expenditures, James R. Hines Jr.
Income Inequality, Progressive Taxation And Tax Expenditures, James R. Hines Jr.
Book Chapters
There are important and growing concerns about income inequality in the United States and other high-income countries. These concerns reflect rising apprehension about the political and social consequences of inequality and worries that the advance of technology, expanding international trade and investment, and other economic developments may have significantly widened income gaps in recent decades and will continue to do so in the future. In the United States, these concerns have prompted renewed calls for political activism and vigorous searches for policy measures that might improve the relative economic positions of low- and middle-income Americans.
There are many ways in …
A Theory Of Poverty: Legal Immobility, Sara Sternberg Greene
A Theory Of Poverty: Legal Immobility, Sara Sternberg Greene
Faculty Scholarship
The puzzle of why the cycle of poverty persists and upward class mobility is so difficult for the poor has long captivated scholars and the public alike. Yet with all of the attention that has been paid to poverty, the crucial role of the law, particularly state and local law, in perpetuating poverty is largely ignored. This Article offers a new theory of poverty, one that introduces the concept of legal immobility. Legal immobility considers the cumulative effects of state and local laws as a mechanism through which poverty is perpetuated and upward mobility is stunted. The Article provides an …
The Constitutionality Of A National Wealth Tax, Dawn Johnsen, Walter E. Dellinger Iii
The Constitutionality Of A National Wealth Tax, Dawn Johnsen, Walter E. Dellinger Iii
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
A Different Class Of Care: The Benefits Crisis And Low-Wage Workers, Trina Jones
A Different Class Of Care: The Benefits Crisis And Low-Wage Workers, Trina Jones
Faculty Scholarship
When compared to other developed nations, the United States fares poorly with regard to benefits for workers. While the situation is grim for most U.S. workers, it is worse for low-wage workers. Data show a significant benefits gap between low-wage and high-wage in terms of flexible work arrangements (FWAs), paid leave, pensions, and employer-sponsored health-care insurance, among other things. This gap exists notwithstanding the fact that FWAs and employment benefits produce positive returns for employees, employers, and society in general. Despite these returns, this Article contends that employers will be loath to extend FWAs and greater employment benefits to low-wage …
Changing The Tax Code To Create Consumer-Driven Health Insurance Competition, Regina Herzlinger, Barak D. Richman
Changing The Tax Code To Create Consumer-Driven Health Insurance Competition, Regina Herzlinger, Barak D. Richman
Faculty Scholarship
Because current tax laws exclude employer-paid health insurance premiums from employees’ taxable wages and income, employer-sponsored insurance remains the primary source of health insurance for most employed Americans. Economists have long blamed the employer-based insurance tax exclusion for inflating health care costs, and, more recently, for constraining income growth and exacerbating income inequality.
We execute a simulation to test the effect of permitting employees to receive their employers’ premium contribution directly and then purchase health insurance themselves, using tax-free funds. Employees could deduct for income tax purposes the amount used for insurance and, if they spend less than the amount …
Inequality Rediscovered, Jedediah Purdy, David Singh Grewal
Inequality Rediscovered, Jedediah Purdy, David Singh Grewal
Faculty Scholarship
Widespread recognition that economic inequality has been growing for forty years in most of the developed world, and in fact has tended to grow across most of the history of modern economies, shows that the period 1945-1973, when inequality of wealth and income shrank, was a marked anomaly in historical experience. At the time, however, the anomalous period of equality seemed to vindicate a long history of optimism about economic life: that growth would overcome meaningful scarcity and usher in an egalitarian and humanistic period that could almost qualify as post-economic. This has not been the experience of the last …
Feminism And Economic Inequality, Katharine T. Bartlett
Feminism And Economic Inequality, Katharine T. Bartlett
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop
Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …
Equity By The Numbers: Measuring Poverty, Inequality, And Injustice, Matthew D. Adler
Equity By The Numbers: Measuring Poverty, Inequality, And Injustice, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
Can we measure inequity? Can we arrive at a number or numbers capturing the extent to which a given society is equitable or inequitable? Sometimes such questions are answered with a “no”: equity is a qualitative, non-numerical consideration.
This Article offers a different perspective. The difficulty with equity measurement is not the impossibility of quantification, but the overabundance of possible metrics. There currently exist at least four families of equity-measurement frameworks, used by scholars and, to some extent, governments: inequality metrics (such as the Gini coefficient), poverty metrics, social-gradient metrics (such as the concentration index), and equity-regarding social welfare functions. …
Wealth And Democracy, Jedediah Purdy
Wealth And Democracy, Jedediah Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
The renewed debate over inequality has highlighted a set of deficits in much of the last fifty-plus years of thinking on the topic. The late twentieth-century tradition of thinking about distributive justice largely assumed (1) that market dynamics would produce stable and tolerable levels of inequality; and (2) that a relatively powerful, competent, and legitimate state could effectively redistribute to mitigate what inequality did arise. What was largely overlooked in this thought and has since risen to central attention is the prospect that (1) accelerating levels of market-produced inequality will (2) undermine the legitimacy and efficacy of the state and …
For Better And Worse: The Differing Income Tax Treatments Of Marriage At Different Income Levels, Lawrence A. Zelenak
For Better And Worse: The Differing Income Tax Treatments Of Marriage At Different Income Levels, Lawrence A. Zelenak
Faculty Scholarship
Although both marriage penalties and marriage bonuses exist at all income levels under the federal income tax, the system is tilted toward penalties for lower-income couples, toward bonuses for middle-income couples, and back toward penalties for upper income couples. This Article begins by explaining how the tax rules produce these differing treatments of marriage at different points in the income distribution. It then argues that the increase in recent decades in the social acceptability and prevalence of cohabitation makes tax marriage effects a more serious concern--in terms of both behavioral, effects and fairness-than in earlier decades. After demonstrating that Congress …
Antitrust, Competition Policy, And Inequality, Jonathan B. Baker, Steven C. Salop
Antitrust, Competition Policy, And Inequality, Jonathan B. Baker, Steven C. Salop
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …
The Impact Of Income Disparity On Financial Regulation, Steven L. Schwarcz
The Impact Of Income Disparity On Financial Regulation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Pigou-Dalton Principle And The Structure Of Distributive Justice, Matthew D. Adler
The Pigou-Dalton Principle And The Structure Of Distributive Justice, Matthew D. Adler
Faculty Scholarship
The Pigou-Dalton (PD) principle recommends a non-leaky, non-rank-switching transfer of goods from someone with more goods to someone with less. This Article defends the PD principle as an aspect of distributive justice --- enabling the comparison of two distributions, neither completely equal, as more or less just. It shows how the PD principle flows from a particular view, adumbrated by Thomas Nagel, about the grounding of distributive justice in individuals' "claims." And it criticizes two competing frameworks for thinking about justice that less clearly support the principle: the veil-of-ignorance framework, and Larry Temkin's proposal that fairer distributions are those concerning …
Occupying America: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The American Dream, And The Challenge Of Socio-Economic Inequality, Trina Jones
Occupying America: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The American Dream, And The Challenge Of Socio-Economic Inequality, Trina Jones
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Access To Medicine In An Era Of Fractal Inequality, Frank Pasquale
Access To Medicine In An Era Of Fractal Inequality, Frank Pasquale
Faculty Scholarship
Those in the richest countries have far more income and wealth than those in poor countries. Moreover, the most fortunate in the richest countries – particularly those in the top centile of the income distribution – are far richer than those around them. Most dramatically, even within that top centile, the richest of the rich have far more resources than even their elite peers. Like fractals, the patterns of distribution repeat at various levels.
This pattern of fractal inequality ensures that spending that seems trivial to those at the top of an income distribution can overwhelm the purchasing power of …
Business As Usual? Brown And The Continuing Conundrum Of Race In America, Robert S. Chang, Jerome M. Culp Jr.
Business As Usual? Brown And The Continuing Conundrum Of Race In America, Robert S. Chang, Jerome M. Culp Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Beyond Welfare Reform: Economic Justice In The 21st Century, Peter B. Edelman
Beyond Welfare Reform: Economic Justice In The 21st Century, Peter B. Edelman
Georgetown Law Faculty Lectures and Appearances
Thank you so much, Mary Louise. I am deeply honored that you asked me to be here today with you and Tomas and Dan to deliver these remarks in memory of Mario Olmos. He was a wonderful role model for the values that have been celebrated throughout this lecture series, and I am doubly honored to be added to the list of distinguished speaker who have preceded me.
Income Distribution Dynamics With Endogenous Fertility, Daniel L. Chen, Michael Kremer
Income Distribution Dynamics With Endogenous Fertility, Daniel L. Chen, Michael Kremer
Faculty Scholarship
Developing countries with highly unequal income distributions, such as Brazil or South Africa, face an uphill battle in reducing inequality. Educated workers in these countries have a much lower birth rate than uneducated workers. Assuming children of educated workers are more likely to become educated, this fertility differential increaases the proportion of unskilled workers, reducing their wages, and thus their opportunity cost of having children, creating a vicious cycle. A model incorporating this effect generates multiple stedy-state levels of inequality, suggesting that in some circumstances, temporarily increasing access to educational opportunities could permanently reduce inequality. Empirical evidence suggests that the …
Poverty And Welfare Policy In The Post-Clinton Era, Peter B. Edelman
Poverty And Welfare Policy In The Post-Clinton Era, Peter B. Edelman
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This is an important time to talk about people in need. There have been major changes recently in public policy toward those in need, and we have seen enough of their effect to be able to discuss the next steps. We have a new President and Congress. A recession is looking more probable by the day. And the 1996 welfare law is coming up for reauthorization in 2002. So this is a good time to look at how we are doing and what we need to do.
Non-Economic Objectives And The Efficiency Properties Of Trade, Jagdish N. Bhagwati
Non-Economic Objectives And The Efficiency Properties Of Trade, Jagdish N. Bhagwati
Faculty Scholarship
It is well known (Kemp, 1962; Samuelson, 1962; Bhagwati, forthcoming) that, for a country with no monopoly power in trade (or domestic distortions), free trade (in the sense of a policy resulting in the equalization of domestic and foreign prices and hence excluding trade, production and consumption taxes, subsidies, and quantitative restrictions) is the optimal policy. It follows, therefore, that free trade is superior to no trade.
It has also been argued recently (Kemp, 1962), that, even in the case where there is monopoly power in trade, so that both no trade and free trade are suboptimal policies, it is …