Special Issue: The Economics of Inequality

Abstract

In summer 2013 the Austrian Economic Association decided to organize its 2014 annual conference on the topic of ‘‘Economics of Inequality’’. At that time both the OECD and the IMF had already published numerous research papers on the issue of economic inequality. However, Thomas Piketty’s bestseller ‘‘Capital in the 21st Century’’ had only been published in French. In March 2014, when the English version of Piketty’s book was published, the deadline for submissions to the conference was already over. Still, the organizers received more submissions to the conference than ever before. What is the reason for the enormous interest in inequality? In one of his most influential papers on inequality, Sir Anthony B. Atkinson (1997) called for ‘‘Bringing income distribution in from the cold’’. Since the beginning of the new century, this ‘‘call’’ has been rather successful. In particular, a group of economists around A. Atkinson, T. Piketty, E. Saez and F. Alvaredo has published numerous new papers and books on this issue. Atkinson and Bourguignon (2015) have just recently published a nearly all-encompassing 2,250 page-long 2nd volume of the handbook on income distribution.