The topic called "income distribution" is used for very different things.
First, Blinder-type neoclassical models with agents who know their entire future, incl. their wages, discount rates, preferences etc. With zero real data. No social classes, no politics. No nothing.
First, Blinder-type neoclassical models with agents who know their entire future, incl. their wages, discount rates, preferences etc. With zero real data. No social classes, no politics. No nothing.
Second, Staffian and Kaldorian abstract functional distributions which are just a wage/profit ratios in a theoretical model. With no real data, except as illustrations. Very vague relation to reality (as No 1 models).
Third, purely empirical exercises a la Atkinson that have lots of data but no underlying economic or political story (no parties, strikes, wars, technological change).
Fourth, empirical papers on wage distribution that may matter for labor economics, but have very little to do with inequality, its effects & transmission which takes place through households. Further, they disregard K income which is heavily concentrated.
This is why inequality studies between ~1960 and ~1990s were not very useful. And the whole area went into a long decline & irrelevance.
But what were the reasons for it?
Chapter VII (The Eclipse) of my forthcoming book.
But what were the reasons for it?
Chapter VII (The Eclipse) of my forthcoming book.
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