Policies for Equality Under Low or No Growth : a Model Inspired by Piketty
Hartley, Tilman (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
van den Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Kallis, Giorgos (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Date:	2020
Abstract:	GDP growth is declining in industrial economies, and there is increasing evidence that growth may be environmentally unsustainable. If growth falls below returns to wealth then inequalities increase, as Thomas Piketty recently showed. This poses a challenge to managing slow and/or negative growth. Here, we examine policies that have been proposed to solve the problem of increasing income inequality in slow- or non-growing economies, including redistribution, taxation, and employment reforms. We construct a simple model, expanding Piketty's recent work, to evaluate the parameter ranges within which these different policies can be effective. Our analysis leads to two main findings. First, except in the case of complete wealth equality, any strategy to prevent increasing income inequality must reduce returns to wealth below the rate of growth. Second, several strategies may prevent an increase in income inequality during periods of low growth and may slow rising inequality, but not prevent it, in non-growing economies.
Grants:	European Commission 882314 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MDM-2015-0552
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Inequality ; Post-growth ; Stationary economy ; Steady state economy ; Public policy
Published in:	Review of Political Economy, Vol. 32, Issue 2 (June 2020) , p. 243-258, ISSN 1465-3982

DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2020.1769293

17 p, 1.8 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) > Environmental and Climate Economics (ECE)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles