From Soviets to oligarchs: inequality and property in Russia 1905-2016

Abstract

We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme, ERC Grant Agreement n. 340831. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

The Distribution of Gains from Globalization

“…Figure 7 illustrates these effects for all ten deciles. These results support and add to recent research documenting that recent periods of income growth have disproportionally benefitted the very top of the income distribution in several advanced and emerging economies (Alvaredo et al 2013(Alvaredo et al , 2017Novokmet et al 2017;Piketty et al 2016;World Inequality Lab 2017).…”

Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

“…In particular, the method in three steps is very similar to that used for China in Piketty et al (), and for Russia in Novokmet et al . (), with some differences highlighted in the following sections.…”

“…Here we follow a simple method similar to that applied in Novokmet et al . (), and use rich lists to produce estimates of top wealth shares for Middle Eastern countries in 2016, which we then use to allocate tax‐exempt capital income. We use billionaire’s lists published by Forbes and the magazine Arabian Business.…”

“…For this, we follow common methods that involve the combination of national accounts, surveys, and fiscal registries in a consistent manner to produce distributional national accounts . The method has already been applied to the US (Piketty et al, ), France (Garbinti et al, ; ), China (Piketty et al, ), and Russia (Novokmet et al, ). Although there are similarities across countries, lessons can be drawn from specific cases to help produce new databases for future works, in a context of scarcity of data.…”

Parties, Pavilions and Protests: The Heteronomous World Politics of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

“…Russian society is characterised by extreme inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth -but also by a high tolerance for high inequality. As Novokmet, Piketty and Zucman argue in their research examining the accumulation and distribution of wealth in Russia, "extreme inequality seems acceptable in Russia, as long as billionaires and oligarchs appear to be loyal to the Russian state and perceived national interests" (Novokmet et al, 2017). Contemporary art patronage constitutes an arena for creating such appearances, and this arena often extends beyond the borders of Russia.…”