A case for redistribution? income inequality and wealth concentration in the recent crisis

Thomas Goda, Ozlem Onaran and Engelbert Stockhammer

No 14056, Greenwich Papers in Political Economy from University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre

Abstract: Several Nobel laureates economists have called for redistributive policies. This paper shows that there is a strong case for redistributive policies because the global increase of income inequality and wealth concentration was an important driver for the financial and Eurozone crisis. The high levels of income inequality resulted in balance of payment imbalances and rising debt levels. Rising wealth concentration contributed to the crisis because the increasing asset demand from the rich played a key role in the rise of the structured credit market and enabled poor and middle-income households to accumulate increasing amounts of debt. To tame the inherent instability of the current mode of capitalism it is necessary to reduce inequality.

Keywords: financial crisis; eurozone crisis; distribution; income inequality; wealth concentration; redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/14056/1/GPERC05_Onaran_Goda_StockhammerF.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: A case for redistribution? Income inequality and wealth concentration in the recent crisis (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gpe:wpaper:14056

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Greenwich Papers in Political Economy from University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nadine Edwards ().