ABSTRACT
Substantial increases in inequalities have been observed for more than two decades in a wide range of countries, including the US, the UK and many other OECD countries. This stylized fact has given birth to a sizable literature, which first reached the consensus that skill-biased-technological change was the main factor driving inequalities, especially wage inequalities, in the late 1990s and the early 2000s (Katz and Autor 1999). Another type of explanation, partly complementary to the previous one, focuses on the rising concentration of income among top income earners, which might have been caused by the capture by them of an increasing share of value added but also by regressive fiscal reforms (Atkinson et al. 2011; Krugman 2007).
