ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Mastiffs and Greyhounds: The history of the analytical treatment of genetic differences as explanations of inequality in personal incomes
Author: Theocarakis Nicholas
In classical political economy differences in innate abilities were not considered important nor theoretically interesting. With the theory of marginal productivity it became possible to explain differences in personal incomes to differences in innate ental abilities. Galton Hereditary Genius in 1869 suggested a Gaussian distribution of such abilities and Pareto attempted to provide an empirical law for the distribution of income. Pigou's paradox, namely the observation that the distribution of incomes and physical or mental characteristics are different triggered a literature to explain how a normal "intelligence" distribution can transform into a lognormal one with a possible Pareto tail. This paper surveys these attempts and the econometric attempts to establish a genetic base for inequality.
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