Varieties of Top IncomesSandy Brian Hager EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2020, vol. 18, issue 4, 1175-1198 Abstract: Focusing on the advanced political economies, this article critically reviews the recent scholarship on the evolution of top incomes over the past few decades. The existing literature shows that the determination of top incomes is complex, multifaceted and bound up with factors associated with both politics and economics. Technological change and globalization are vital sources of change in contemporary capitalism, but the continued diversity in top income shares across the advanced capitalist world suggests that these forces alone cannot account for the empirical patterns. Instead, there is compelling evidence that power and politics, including government policy, trade union and left party strength, institutions and financialization, all play a pivotal role in regulating distributive outcomes. It is argued that future research will require a plurality of methodological approaches in order to clarify the complex causal process that drives top-end income concentration. Keywords: income; distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:232307 Access Statistics for this article More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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