Lunchtime Must-Read: Florence Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron: Power from the People

…This finding holds even after accounting for shifts in political power, changes in social norms regarding inequality, sectoral employment shifts (such as deindustrialization and the growing role of the financial sector), and increases in education levels. The relationship between union density and the Gini of gross income is also negative but somewhat weaker. This could be because the Gini underestimates increases in inequality at the top of the income distribution.
We also find that deunionization is associated with less redistribution of income and that reductions in minimum wages increase overall inequality considerably…