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Political Economy of Wealth Inequality and Property Ownership
dc.contributor.advisor | El-Hodiri, Mohamed | |
dc.contributor.author | Nti-Addae, Akwasi | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-04-20T22:29:03Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-04-20T22:29:03Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2017-05-31 | |
dc.date.submitted | 2017 | |
dc.identifier.other | http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:15319 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1808/26344 | |
dc.description.abstract | After the World War era, there has been a gradual rise in wealth Inequality in industrialized economies, with wealth in the United States becoming more concentrated than wealth in most European economies.[1] Current research on wealth inequality attributes the main reason for the long-run divergence in wealth inequality to the r −g gap, where r is the rate of return on capital and g is the economy’s growth rate. Nonetheless, speculations about capital and the rate of return on capital, it’s definition and measurement, have raised concerns about deriving the r−g gap. Using the United States, post World Wars, as a study case, my dissertation addresses the concentration of wealth by investigating income from property ownership. Specifically it focusses on 3 main issues: (i) I provide an alternative measure for the Piketty r − g gap by deriving the rate of reutrn on property ownership (rp), and show that the gap between the long-run rate of return on property ownership (rp) and the long-run growth in the economy (g) explains the fast rise in wealth inequality captured in the U.S. economy. (ii) I show that when traditional models, that focus on production only, are used to capture the natural behavior of wealth inequality, wealth inequality tends to be explosive over the long-run. (iii) Since property ownership is not confined to production alone, I implement the new measure of rp − g into a simple model of wealth accumulation, that takes into account both productive and non-productive property in generating wealth. I find that wealth inequality in the U.S. economy is more concentrated than suggested by Thomas Piketty. | |
dc.format.extent | 81 pages | |
dc.language.iso | en | |
dc.publisher | University of Kansas | |
dc.rights | Copyright held by the author. | |
dc.subject | Economics | |
dc.subject | Inequality | |
dc.subject | Property Ownership | |
dc.subject | Rate of return on Property Ownership | |
dc.subject | Wealth | |
dc.title | Political Economy of Wealth Inequality and Property Ownership | |
dc.type | Dissertation | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Asiedu, Elizabeth | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Antonio, Robert | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Keating, John | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Zhang, Jianbo | |
dc.thesis.degreeDiscipline | Economics | |
dc.thesis.degreeLevel | Ph.D. | |
dc.identifier.orcid | ||
dc.rights.accessrights | openAccess |
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Dissertations [4889]
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Economics Dissertations and Theses [169]