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HOW LONG DOES ECONOMIC INJUSTICE LAST?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2021

David Miles
David Miles*
Affiliation:
Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. Email: d.miles@imperial.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article assesses whether economic injustices that took place in the past still have significant implications for the material welfare of people many years later. That issue is central to the question of how fair is the distribution of wealth and income today. It is also relevant to issues of reparations for past wrongs. I find that in standard neoclassical models of economic growth the lingering effects of injustice from more than 70 years ago are generally small. But effects can last much longer once we allow for impacts of past injustices to be transmitted through human capital accumulation as well as physical capital.

Keywords

reparationsdistributive justiceP10P14O15
Type
Research Article
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 255: NEW DIRECTIONS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND POLICY IDEAS , February 2021 , pp. 69 - 78
Copyright
© National Institute Economic Review 2021

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References

Miles, D. (2018), ‘The half life of economic injustice’, CEPR Discussion Paper 13342, December 2018.Google Scholar
Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy State and Utopia, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (2009), The Idea of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar