演講者簡介 : Professor Su received his Ph.D. in Economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics, National Taiwan University. His research fields are Macroeconomics, Financial Economics, and Networks.
演講摘要 : This paper constructs new data to infer inequality and poverty issues in Taiwan. Following the method in Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (2017), we distribute National Income into every individualistic adult in Taiwan and use this new personal income (pre- and post-tax) data to (1) uncover the distribution of economic growth, (2) evaluate the effects of government’s redistribution policy in alleviating inequality,(3) uncover true poverty rate. We found that all official statistics seriously underestimate the level of income inequality and poverty in Taiwan. Government’s redistribution policies have moderate effect in reducing income inequality in levels but worsen the distribution of economic growth. The effect of redistribution on reducing income inequality has declined over the past 15 years.
