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"Global carbon pricing can yield revenues which are large enough to create significant global pro-poor redistributive opportunities. We analyze alternative multidecade growth trajectories for major global economies with carbon tax rates designed to stabilize emissions in the presence of both continued country growth and autonomous energy use efficiency improvement. In our central case analysis, revenues from globally internalizing carbon pricing rise to 7% and then fall to 5% of gross world product. High growth in India and China is the major equalizing force globally over time, but the incremental redistributive effects that can be achieved using global carbon pricing revenues are large both in absolute and relative terms. Revenues from carbon pricing depend on growth and energy efficiency improvement parameters as well as on the price elasticity of demand for fossil fuels"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

This volume looks beyond the distribution of income by examining the assets, debts, and net worth of individuals and households to create a global picture of wealth, its distribution and concentration. Unlike previous studies, this study includes material on a number of transition and developing countries as well as high income OECD countries.

The cross-country relationship of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case and death rates with previously measured income inequality and poverty in the pandemic's first wave is studied, controlling for other underlying factors, in a worldwide sample of countries. If the estimated associations are interpreted as causal, the Gini coefficient for income has a significant positive effect on both cases and deaths per capita in regressions using the full sample and for cases but not for deaths when Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD sub-samples are treated separately. The Gini coefficient for wealth has a significant positive effect on cases, but not on deaths, in both sub-samples and in the full sample. Poverty generally has weak positive effects in the full and non-OECD samples, but a relative poverty measure has a strong positive effect on cases in the OECD sample. Analysis of the gap between COVID-19 first-wave cases and deaths per capita in Canada and the higher rates in the United States indicates that 37 percent of the cases gap and 28 percent of the deaths gap could be attributed to the higher-income Gini in the United States according to the full-sample regressions.

Canada's disaster financial assistance (DFA) system provides benefits through the provinces, subsidized by the federal DFA Arrangements (DFAA) above damage thresholds that were tripled in 2015. Disaster incidence and severity is increasing. Flooding is most costly, then storms and wildfire. The need for policy changes is analyzed, with particular attention to flooding. It is argued that flood coverage should be required under home insurance, subsidized in high-risk areas at rates declining over time to encourage self-protection or relocation. Buyouts should be offered and made mandatory in the highest risk areas. Further DFAA assistance reductions should be considered, to give stronger incentives for mitigation of all disasters.

Poverty and rising income inequality in Canada have brought demands for improved government action on redistribution. Unfortunately, such pleas risk being overshadowed by a looming fiscal crunch as the baby boomers retire. An expanding population of seniors will add at least one percent annually to both growing health and OAS/GIS costs so that, absent meaningful change, other spending will have to be slashed by an average of 20.2 percent by 2032 if total spending and revenues are not to rise relative to GDP. For Canada's tax-transfer system to keep fulfilling its redistributive role, a fundamental rethink is required. With non-seniors spending being squeezed, some changes in tax mix, moderate revenue increases and refined targeting of transfers will be needed to protect the system's progressive nature. Increasing personal income tax and reducing property tax by an offsetting amount would improve redistribution without raising taxes. More revenue could be obtained without severe distortions via a capital transfer tax, the elimination of boutique credits aimed at niche beneficiaries, or perhaps a dual income tax which exacts more from labor than capital income. Improvements to existing transfer programs are another way forward. The conversion of EI to a purely insurance basis, freeing up funds to support redistribution via refundable credits is a possibility. Another cost-saver involves removing the indexation of the OAS/GIS income threshold and allowing its real value to decline, making more recipients subject to clawbacks. Whichever course governments pursue, revamping Canada's taxtransfer system will be a delicate and difficult task. This paper explores the policy choices available, and makes it clear that time is not on our side.