David Weil
ECON 1565 (Senior Seminar)
Spring 2015
The rise in income inequality in the United States over the last three decades has been one of the most important economic phenomena of the post-World War II period, with enormous implications for individual welfare, social relations, and government policy. The focus in Econ 1565 is on the macroeconomic dimensions of income inequality. How much of national income is paid to capital and how much to labor? What determines the gap in income between workers with different skill levels, as well as variation in income within skill groups? How have changes in technology, openness to trade, government policy, and the quantities of factors themselves contributed to changes in these relative returns? What determines the aggregate quantities of different factors of production as well as their distribution among individuals, and how is this process changing over time?
How does inequality feed back to affect macroeconomic stability and long term growth?