Capital Accumulation, Private Property and Rising Inequality in China, 1978-2015

Piketty, Thomas; Li, Yang; Zucman, Gabriel

doi:10.3386/w23368

Cited by 76 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…It is also worth stressing that inequality levels in the Middle East appear to be significantly larger than those observed in giant countries with much larger populations such as China and India (Figures a and 2b). Here we use inequality estimates that were recently constructed for China and India by Piketty, Yang and Zucman () and Chancel and Piketty (). These estimates are obviously far from perfect, but they probably tend to minimize the gap with the Middle East (in particular, we have access to more extensive income tax data for China and India than the for the Middle East).…”

Section: Main Results: Extreme Concentration Of Income In the Middle mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this, we follow common methods that involve the combination of national accounts, surveys, and fiscal registries in a consistent manner to produce distributional national accounts . The method has already been applied to the US (Piketty et al, ), France (Garbinti et al, ; ), China (Piketty et al, ), and Russia (Novokmet et al, ). Although there are similarities across countries, lessons can be drawn from specific cases to help produce new databases for future works, in a context of scarcity of data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

Alvaredo

Assouad

Piketty

2018

Review of Income and Wealth

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In this paper we combine household surveys, national accounts, income tax data and wealth data in order to estimate income concentration in the Middle East for the period 1990–2016. According to our benchmark series, the Middle East appears to be the most unequal region in the world, with a top decile income share as large as 64 percent, compared to 37 percent in Western Europe, 47 percent in the US and 55 percent in Brazil (see Alvaredo et al. 2018). This is due both to enormous inequality between countries (particularly between oil‐rich and population‐rich countries) and to large inequality within countries (which we probably under‐estimate, given the limited access to proper fiscal data). We stress the importance of increasing transparency on income and wealth in the Middle East, as well as the need to develop mechanisms of regional redistribution and investment.

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Section: Main Results: Extreme Concentration Of Income In the Middle mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

Alvaredo

Assouad

Piketty

2018

Review of Income and Wealth

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“…Alstadsaeter et al (2016) show that business income reported on individual income tax returns is responsive to tax changes. A wave of recent studies attempts to compute more comprehensive inequality statistics by distributing all of the national income recorded in the national accounts (including corporate retained earnings, and all other legally tax-exempt income); see, e.g., Piketty, Saez and Zucman (2016), Garbinti, Goupille-Lebret and Piketty (2017), and Piketty, Yang and Zucman (2017). These "distributional national accounts" attempt to take into account tax avoidance, but not yet tax evasion (as national income itself is under-estimated when households hide assets abroad; see Zucman, 2013).…”

Section: Tax Evasion By the Wealthy: Evidence From Leaksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Appendix K shows that introducing competition in our model does not affect the comparative 45 Instead, HSBC was fined $1.92 billion, in a year when its pretax profits reached $22.6 billion. 46 In the world's two largest economies, the United States and China, top wealth shares have increased significantly since the beginning of the century (Saez and Zucman, 2014;Piketty, Yang, Zucman, 2017). Forbes magazine data suggest that the wealth of global billionaires is rising faster than world wealth (Piketty, 2014).…”

Section: A Model Of Tax Evasion and Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Tax Evasion and Inequality

Alstadsæter

Johannesen²,

Zucman

2017

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This paper attempts to estimate the size and distribution of tax evasion in rich countries. We combine random audits-the key source used to study tax evasion so far-with new micro-data leaked from large offshore financial institutions-HSBC Switzerland ("Swiss leaks") and Mossack Fonseca ("Panama Papers")-matched to population-wide wealth records in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. We find that tax evasion rises sharply with wealth, a phenomenon random audits fail to capture. On average about 3% of personal taxes are evaded in Scandinavia, but this figure rises to close to 30% in the top 0.01% of the wealth distribution, a group that includes households with more than $45 million in net wealth. A simple model of the supply of tax evasion services can explain why evasion rises steeply with wealth. Taking tax evasion into account increases the rise in inequality seen in tax data since the 1970s markedly, highlighting the need to move beyond tax data to capture income and wealth at the top, even in countries where tax compliance is generally high. We also find that after reducing tax evasion-by using tax amnesties-tax evaders do not legally avoid taxes more. This result suggests that fighting tax evasion can be an effective way to collect more tax revenue from the very wealthy.

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“…For example, in the neo-Marxists framework productive assets also include labor power, organizations, and skills (Wright 1985;Lin and Wu 2010). 9 See Piketty and al. (2017) for evidence of the rising capital share in national income in China.…”

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confidence: 99%

From Workers to Capitalists in Less Than Two Generations: A Study of Chinese Urban Elite Transformation Between 1988 and 2013

Li¹,

Novokmet²,

Milanović³

2020

Preprint

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Economic and social transformation of China during the past 40 years is without precedent in human history. While the economic transformation was extensively studied, social transformation was not. In this paper, we use for the first time harmonized household surveys covering the period 1988-2013 to study the changes in the characteristics the richest 5 percent of China's urban population. We find that the elite changed from being composed of high government officials, clerical staff, and workers in 1988 to professionals and small and large business owners in 2013. The educational level of the elite increased substantially. Membership in CCP has a positive (albeit small) effect on one's income but is particularly valuable to large business owners.

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Capital Accumulation, Private Property and Rising Inequality in China, 1978-2015

Abstract: NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Cited by 76 publications

References 16 publications

Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

Tax Evasion and Inequality

From Workers to Capitalists in Less Than Two Generations: A Study of Chinese Urban Elite Transformation Between 1988 and 2013

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