Gender Equality and STEM Gaps

This blog post veers further away from (macro-) economics than my usual writing and I am anything but an expert on the topic. Thoughts and feedback are, hence, all the more welcome! A friend (and chemistry teacher by trait) recently sent me the chart reproduced below, which is taken from a study authored by Professor …

Efficiency and equality (3): The IMF and a look at some policies

In the preceding two posts I looked at two different reasons why the “Big Tradeoff” between equality and efficiency might not be so great after all. In the first blogpost I suggested that neither theory nor evidence unambiguously suggest that tax-and-redistribute interventions have detrimental effects on growth; instead, they might promote both equality and efficiency. …

Efficiency and equality (2): it’s not all about redistribution

In the previous blog post I drew attention to research suggesting that, on the whole, greater redistribution might actually improve equality and efficiency (the latter being proxied by growth), and that the empirical evidence suggested a fortiori that inequality had a negative effect on growth. I contrasted this with the “received view” that there is an …

Efficiency and equality (1): The (not so) Big Tradeoff

Forty years ago Arthur M. Okun (1928-1980) published an influential book, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff. In that book, he affirmed that “efficiency is bought at the cost of inequalities in income and wealth”, thus suggesting that societies faced a “Big Tradeoff”. This claim still appears to form the implicit premise underlying much of public policy-making. Whether it is …