JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

Wealth in Spain, 1900-2017: A Country of Two Lands  (with Miguel Artola Blanco and Clara Martínez-Toledano) 

The Economic Journal, 2021, Vol. 131, Issue 633, pp. 129-155

Database: Spain Wealth Database

Media coverage: El Diario, Blog NeG , and the 1st World Inequality Report (2018)

BOOK CHAPTERS AND POLICY REPORTS

Historical Political Cleavages and Post-Crisis Transformations in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, 1953-2020 (with Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Marc Morgan)

in A. Gethin, C. Martínez-Toledano, T. Piketty (ed.), Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities. Harvard University Press, 2021.

 [Working paper]; [Summary]; [Appendix]. 

Media coverage: Agenda Pública.

España 2050: Fundamentos y Propuestas para una Estrategia Nacional a Largo Plazo, Capítulo 8. -- [Website]; [Executive summary]

Report on Spain's inequality, co-authored with other social scientists in collaboration with the Spanish Strategic Foresight Office, May 2021

La riqueza y su distribución en España en el largo plazo: 1900-2021  (with Miguel Artola Blanco and Clara Martínez-Toledano)

in J. Carbonell, B. León and J. Soria (ed.), La desigualdad en España. Lengua de Trapo, 2024.

Media coverage: El Diario.

WORKING PAPERS

• The Wealth of Generations (with Timothy Meyer) R&R at Review of Economic Studies

[Latest version] [SSRN working paper] [Slides]

Abstract: This paper uses historical survey microdata to study the life-cycle wealth accumulation across U.S. birth cohorts over the last six decades. We uncover two key new trends: a marked steepening of the life-cycle wealth profile and increased dissaving among older adults. Using a theoretical model and wealth accumulation decompositions, we argue that these new trends were driven by the boom in asset prices since the 1980s: valuation gains led to higher life-cycle wealth and allowed households to increase consumption in retirement. Looking at aggregates, we find that shifts in the life-cycle wealth profile explain a large share of the increase in the aggregate wealth-income ratio. At the same time, the higher consumption by older adults is the most important force behind the decline in the aggregate saving rate since the mid-1980s. 

Media coverage: VoxEU, Bloomberg, El Confidencial, Blog NeG

• The Anatomy of the Global Saving Glut (with Filip Novokmet and Moritz Schularick)

[latest version] [Working Paper]

Abstract: This paper provides a household-level perspective on the rise of global saving and wealth since the 1980s. We calculate asset-specific saving flows and capital gains across the wealth distribution for the G3 economies -- the U.S., Europe, and China. In the past four decades, global saving inequality has risen sharply. The share of household saving flows coming from the richest 10% of household increased by 60% while saving of middle-class households has fallen sharply. The most important source for the surge in top-10% saving was the secular rise of global corporate saving whose ultimate owners the rich households are. Housing capital gains have supported wealth growth for middle-class households despite falling saving and rising debt. Without meaningful capital gains in risky assets, the wealth share of the bottom half of the population declined substantially in most G3 economies.

• Spatial Wage Inequality in North America and Western Europe: Changes Between and Within Local Labour Markets 1975-2019 (with Sebastien Breau, Pawel Bukowski, Mark Fransham, Annie Lee, Neil Lee, Margarita Lopez Forero, Clement Malgouyres, Filip Novokmet, Moritz Schularick,  Gregory Verdugo) 

[Working Paper]; [Summary] [Project's website]

This paper presents the first systematic attempt to create internationally comparable evidence showing how different countries perform in terms of geographic wage inequalities. We create cross-country comparable measures of spatial wage disparities between and within similarly-defined local labour market areas (LLMAs) for Canada, France, (West) Germany, the UK and the US since the 1970s, and assess their contribution to national inequality. By the end of the 2010s, spatial inequalities in LLMA mean wages are similar in Canada, France, Germany and the UK; the US exhibits the highest degree of spatial inequality. Over the study period, spatial inequalities have nearly doubled in all countries, except for France where spatial inequalities have fallen back to 1970s levels. Due to a concomitant increase in within-place inequality, the contribution of places in explaining national wage inequality has remained fairly constant over the 40-year study period, except in the UK where we document a significant increase. Whilst common global social, economic and technological shocks are important drivers of spatial inequality, this variation in levels and trends of spatial inequality opens the way to comparative research exploring the role of national institutions in mediating how global shocks translate into economic disparities between places.

Media coverage: VoxEU, El Confidencial, CEP-LSE Centre piece.

• Land Inequality in the Developing World (with Yajna Govind, Filip Novokmet and Daniel Sánchez Ordoñez) 

[Working Paper]; [Summary]

Abstract:  Agricultural land is vital for three out of four of the poorest billion individuals in the world yet little is known about the distribution of agricultural land. Existing cross-country estimates of land inequality, based on agriculture census data, measure the size distribution of agricultural holdings. These neither reflect land ownership inequality nor value inequality and often do not account for the landless population. In this paper, we tackle these issues and provide novel and consistent estimates of land inequality across countries, based on household surveys. We show that i) land-value inequality can differ significantly from land-area inequality, ii) differences in the proportion of landless across countries vary substantially, affecting markedly inequality estimates and, iii) regional patterns in inequality according to our benchmark metric (land-value inequality including the landless) contradict existing estimates from agricultural censuses. Overall, South Asia and Latin America exhibit the highest inequality with top 10% landowners capturing up to 75% of agricultural land, followed by Africa and ‘Communist’ Asia (China and Vietnam) at levels around 55-60%.

This paper has been featured in The Guardian and International Land Coalition (ILC) Report - Uneven Grounds

METHODOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS

• Estimation of Global Wealth Aggregates in WID.world: Methodology  (with Pierre Brassac, Clara Martínez-Toledano, Thomas Piketty and Alice Sodano)

• Global Wealth Inequality on WID.world: Estimates and Imputations (with Felix Bajard, Pierre Brassac, Lucas Chancel, Clara Martínez-Toledano, Thomas Piketty and Alice Sodano)

• Distributional National Accounts Guidelines: Methods and Concepts Used in the World Inequality Database (Working paper,  Sept. 2020)

(with the WID's co-directors and coordinators)

• Revised National Income and Wealth Series: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the USA  (Working paper, Aug. 2019)