DP13342 The Half Life of Economic Injustice
Author(s): | David Miles |
Publication Date: | November 2018 |
Date Revised: | January 2019 |
Keyword(s): | Distributive justice, Human Capital, income distribution, Solow growth model |
JEL(s): | O15, P14, P26, P48 |
Programme Areas: | Financial Economics, Macroeconomics and Growth |
Link to this Page: | cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13342 |
How much of today's income (GDP) is a result of unjust economic transactions? How much is a legacy of past acquisition of wealth (capital) which was itself unjust? To answer that question requires two things: first, a principle to determine what is, and what is not, a just acquisition of wealth or a just source of income; second, a means of using that principle to estimate what fraction of wealth and income is unjust. I use a principle put forward by Robert Nozick to provide the first of these things and then use some calculations based on standard neoclassical models of economic growth to illustrate its implications for the scale of unfairness today.