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Digitopoly
Digitopoly

Digitopoly

Competition in the Digital Age

Category: Inequality

Posted on October 30, 2019

Does a wealth tax discourage risky investments?

The other day I wrote about the potential impact of a wealth tax. In so doing, I wrote: "we can all agree that the wealth tax likely deters risk-free saving." This was a paraphrase of a claim made by Larry Summers who then went on to say that it was unknown whether a wealth tax …

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Posted on October 29, 2019October 29, 2019

Innovation + Equality

Today is publication day for Innovation + Equality: How to create a future that is more Star Trek than Terminator (MIT Press). This is my book -- co-authored with Andrew Leigh (the author of Randomistas) -- that examines the relationship between having more equality and more innovation. We make the case that you can have …

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Posted on October 27, 2019October 27, 2019

Does being rich make you better at allocating capital?

Thanks to this interesting debate last week between Saez, Summers and Mankiw on the wealth tax, there has been considerable discussion of the possible effects of a wealth tax. As is usual with these things, the main discussion has been what a wealth tax will do to the behaviour of those taxed at the margin. …

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Posted on January 4, 2016

Creative Destruction and Inequality

In yesterday's post, I reacted to Paul Graham's much talked about essay on inequality by suggesting that the premise -- entrepreneurship causes inequality -- is far from obvious. Indeed, I conjectured that if things were working as they should, entrepreneurship would tend to decrease inequality. My argument was based on where the entrepreneur started in …

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Posted on January 3, 2016

The Entrepreneurship/Inequality Myth

Paul Graham, best known as a founder of Y-Combinator, likes to ruminate on many topics. He favours the essay rather than the tweet. And he has been hard at work on two essays recently; one on structural change in the US economy and the other on inequality. While I suspect they are both coming from …

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Posted on May 7, 2014

'Out of the box' thinking on inequality

This is not strictly digitisation (well, not at all) but I thought I'd just point to a piece I put out today on using social pressure to solve the inequality problem by getting the rich to feel compelled to pay more taxes. Basically, the idea is that shining a light on contributions (even doing so …

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New Book

Recent Posts

  • The year in review for digital technology
  • Remarks on Paul Milgrom
  • Triggers, Transmissions, and Adjustments
  • Uncomfortable economic waters
  • Covid-19 and ‘Forced’ Experimentation

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