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Top Indian wealth shares and inheritances 1966-1985

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  • Kumar, Rishabh

    (University of Massachusetts Boston)

Abstract

Between 1953 and 1985 India implemented various progressive taxes on personal wealth. I use estate tax returns to compute top wealth shares (top 1%, top 0.1% and top 0.01%) over 1966-1985; a period marked explicitly by a dirigiste policy environment. These new series suggest that wealth concentration in India reduced substantially during the 1970s. Although the decline affected the entire top 1%, the losses faced by the top 0.01% were especially large. Combined with identical trends in top income shares, it appears that the 1950-80 expropriations of India’s rich had similarities to institutional transitions and shocks faced by European elites in the early to mid twentieth century.

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  • Kumar, Rishabh, 2019. "Top Indian wealth shares and inheritances 1966-1985," OSF Preprints nc63f, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:nc63f
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/nc63f
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    Cited by:

    1. Anand, Ishan & Kumar, Rishabh, 2022. "The sky and the stratosphere: concentrated wealth in India during the ‘lost decade’," SocArXiv 726c8, Center for Open Science.

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