6 Government and the economic history of American income inequality
I. Introduction
At the end of the 1990s, the subject of inequality was more or less a marginal subfield within the discipline of economics. Since then, thanks largely to the quantitative efforts of Thomas Piketty, Tony Atkinson, Emmanuel Saez, and Edward Wolff, the topic has risen to prominence and now occupies center stage within the discipline. This greater prominence should not be bemoaned but welcomed; though not, as I will argue in this chapter, for the reasons often put forward.
In addition to the efforts of the scholars mentioned above, the crisis of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession also contributed significantly to inequality’s rise to prominence. ...
