"The Mapmaker's Dilemma in Evaluating High-End Inequality"

I have just submitted the above-titled paper to SSRN, and I believe it can be accessed here.

The abstract is as follows:

"The last thirty years have witnessed rising income and wealth concentration among the top 0.1 percent of the population, leading to intense political debate regarding how, if at all, policymakers should respond.  Often, this debate emphasizes the tools of public economics, and in particular optimal income taxation.  However, while these tools can help us in evaluating the issues raised by high-end inequality, their extreme reductionism – which, in other settings, often offers significant analytic payoffs – here proves to have serious drawbacks.  This paper addresses what we do and don’t learn from the optimal income tax literature regarding high-end inequality, and what other inputs might be needed to help one evaluate the relevant issues."

It will be appearing in volume 71 of the University of Miami Law Review.  Although a distinct and freestanding piece, it relates to my book in progress on high-end inequality and literature.  No discussion of literature within it, however - rather, it gives my view of why such approaches as mine in the literature book might be needed to supplement what we can learn from standard practice in the public economics and the optimal income tax literatures, with respect to evaluating the social consequences of rising high-end inequality.