Market institutions and income inequality

Abstract

AbstractSome economic analysis concludes that capitalist institutions tend to produce growing income inequality. Piketty (2014Capital in the Twenty-First Century., Cambridge: Harvard University Press) is a recent example. This paper uses two different datasets on income shares of the top 10% to analyze the effect of market institutions on income inequality. The same empirical specifications give different results for the two datasets. This empirical investigation suggests that whether market institutions generate income inequality is an open question.