This article examines the impact of financialisation on the income shares of the top 1% from 1990-2010, through a panel analysis of 14 OECD countries. Drawing together literatures stressing the dependence of income inequality on the structural bargaining power of capital relative to labour, and of the dependence of accumulation on underlying institutionalised modes of state regulation, it shows that financialisation has significantly enhanced top income shares net of underlying controls. Whilst the income shares of the top 1% appear responsive to variables typical of wider studies of personal income inequality, we emphasise distinctive mechanisms of top income growth linked to the rising dominance of financial instruments and actors, facilitated by a historically specific regulatory order. These conditions were key to the emergence of a state of 'asymmetric bargaining' which disproportionately enhanced the fortunes of the wealthy. Results thus emphasise the importance of class-biased power resources and underlying regulatory structures, as determinants both of income concentration and of the distribution of economic rewards beyond growth capacity alone.

The share of national income going to workers has decreased steadily across Europe since the 1980s. This apparently uniform decrease in labour's share conceals differences amongst states however-in 'liberal' Ireland, this fall has been drastic, while that of 'social democratic' Denmark has been moderate. This article presents a parallel time series analysis of institutional and structural factors shaping labour's share in Ireland and Denmark. Our results show that factors common to the study of variation in labour's share operate in different ways in different countries, both in magnitude and causal mechanism. We find that stressors such as global trade, foreign investment and high-tech growth produce different effects in each location. Equally, protections such as unionization, leftist cabinets and welfare spending display contradictory effects in both locations. We conclude that 'power resource' models of labour share should be supplemented with comparative approaches that emphasize how institutionalized socio-political logics mediate returns to labour.

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Explanations for the causes of famine and food insecurity often reside at a high level of aggregation or abstraction. Popular models within famine studies have often emphasised the role of prime movers such as population stress, or the political-economic structure of access channels, as key determinants of food security. Explanation typically resides at the macro level, obscuring the presence of substantial within-country differences in the manner in which such stressors operate. This study offers an alternative approach to analysing the uneven nature of food security, drawing on the Great Irish famine of 1845-1852. Ireland is often viewed as a classical case of Malthusian stress, whereby population outstripped food supply under a pre-famine demographic regime of expanded fertility. Many have also pointed to Ireland's integration with capitalist markets through its colonial relationship with the British state, and country-wide system of landlordism, as key determinants of local agricultural activity. Such models are misguided, ignoring both substantial complexities in regional demography, and the continuity of non-capitalistic, communal modes of land management long into the nineteenth century. Drawing on resilience ecology and complexity theory, this paper subjects a set of aggregate data on pre-famine Ireland to an optimisation clustering procedure, in order to discern the potential presence of distinctive social-ecological regimes. Based on measures of demography, social structure, geography, and land tenure, this typology reveals substantial internal variation in regional social-ecological structure, and vastly differing levels of distress during the peak famine months. This exercise calls into question the validity of accounts which emphasise uniformity of structure, by revealing a variety of regional regimes, which profoundly mediated local conditions of food security. Future research should therefore consider the potential presence of internal variations in resilience and risk exposure, rather than seeking to characterise cases based on singular macro-dynamics and stressors alone.

The share of national income going to workers has decreased steadily across Europe since the 1980s. This apparently uniform decrease in labour's share conceals differences amongst states however-in 'liberal' Ireland, this fall has been drastic, while that of 'social democratic' Denmark has been moderate. This article presents a parallel time series analysis of institutional and structural factors shaping labour's share in Ireland and Denmark. Our results show that factors common to the study of variation in labour's share operate in different ways in different countries, both in magnitude and causal mechanism. We find that stressors such as global trade, foreign investment and high-tech growth produce different effects in each location. Equally, protections such as unionization, leftist cabinets and welfare spending display contradictory effects in both locations. We conclude that 'power resource' models of labour share should be supplemented with comparative approaches that emphasize how institutionalized socio-political logics mediate returns to labour.

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With financialization now acknowledged as one of the most potent threats to income equality, can finance-driven inequality be explained by a singular causal argument? Taking the case of top incomes across the OECD, this paper addresses the standard causal narrative of financedriven inequality, where rising top income inequality is explained as a function of deregulation, financial sector growth, and a parallel weakening of the role of trade unions and the government. Applying fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a time-series dataset (1975-2005), it assesses the ways in which configurations of institutions combined in different ways prior to the recent financial crisis, to create policy contexts conducive to top income growth. It does this by adopting a time-series approach to QCA, involving calibration and analysis of data at three successive historical waves. Results suggest that top incomes in the era of finance-driven capitalism were subject to a diversity of causal paths which generated similar outcomes in different contexts, in a manner which departs substantially from the standard narrative. In doing so, it elaborates on the application of time-series approaches to case-based analysis, and uses its results to discuss the ways in which institutions may combine in different ways to generate similar, or divergent outcomes.

This paper deals with two principal questions, drawing closely on the experience of Ireland. First, it addresses a deficit in our knowledge of resource governance institutions and land tenure systems as moderators of the impact of famine. We have known for some time of the extent of common‐pool resource systems in districts of 19th‐century Ireland and wider Europe, but their role in determining levels of ecological risk exposure is less understood. Knowing that both food insecurity and common tenancy were higher in marginal Irish districts, this represents a gap in our understanding of the geographical impact of the Great Irish Famine. Second, although current thinking on common‐pool resource governance suggests that such systems were potentially robust to ecological stress, why did this not translate into greater resilience in Ireland? To make sense of this contradiction, we must consider both the local behaviour of ecological stressors and wider context of Irish colonialism. Using local clustering analysis and geographically weighted regression, we see how the impact of key stressors varied geographically. These findings suggest that analyses of the role of common‐pool resource governance in conferring ecological resilience must be tempered with a fuller appreciation of geopolitical context.