Who gains and who loses from economic transformation in Eastern Europe is a key question--but one that is too rarely discussed. To understand the implications of the move to a market economy, it is necessary to know more about the distribution of income under Communism. This book assembles evidence about earnings, dispersion, income inequality and poverty in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the USSR (with separate information for Russia, the Ukraine and other republics). It adopts a comparative perspective--bringing out the differences between these countries and the West, as well as within...

The work draws upon recent research to examine the problem of poverty. In its exploration, Poverty in Europe challenges readers to reach an improved understanding of the problem and to seek improvement.

First published in 1976, the essays in this volume are concerned with the distribution of income and wealth. The papers were first presented at the Royal Economic Society's conference in 1974, which examined the evidence concerning the personal distribution of earnings, compared the distributions apparent in different periods and societies, and studied the association between personal attributes and income. The contributions, from internationally-renowned authors, reflect these areas, and address the questions surrounding inequality, the taxation of wealth and capital transfers that remain...

A rapidly growing area of economic research investigates the top of the income distribution using data from income tax records. In Top Incomes: A Global Perspective New York Times best-selling author Thomas Piketty and noted member of the Conseil d'Analyse Economique, A. B. Atkinson brings together studies of top incomes for twelve countries from around the world, including China, India, Japan, Argentina and Indonesia. Together with the first volume, published in 2007, the studies cover twenty two countries. They have a long time span, the earliest data relating to 1875 (for Norway), allowing...