The politics of who gets what and why has long been one of the central topics in the political economy literature. Rising income inequality has made this issue all the more pertinent, placing redistribution at the forefront of scholarly and public policy debates. This panel contributes to these debates by examining the determinants and effects of redistributive policies in advanced economies. Departing from the standard argument that emphasizes government partisanship as the key determinant of redistribution, the papers in this panel examine more thoroughly the effects of political institutions on redistributive outcomes and the policies used to offset income inequality. Papers by Avdagic & Savage and Barnes demonstrate the importance of preferences of individual ministers and the effects of ministerial discretion in different types of government, while Becher’s paper shows how the chief executive’s power to dissolve the legislature influences partisan conflict over income distribution. Rising income inequality has also been linked to the slowdown in income mobility across generations, as popularized recently by Alan Krueger’s Great Gatsby Curve. The paper by Ansell, Beramendi and Fink addresses this issue by examining how the interplay of labor market calcification and redistributive policies and institutions, such as tax systems and public education, affects intergenerational income mobility. Taken together, therefore, these papers address the foundations of greater inequality in both economic outcomes and economic opportunity.