The Paris School of Economics is hosting a really nice website on top incomes across 22 economies. The top incomes data stretches from the early twentieth century to the present day. For example, the share of total annual income going to the top 1% of earners in the UK has risen from 6% in the 1970s to close to 14% today. In other words, the income share of top earners in the UK is back to pre-WWII levels. A similar pattern exists for Ireland. You can access the database here.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...