1 IntroductionIncome inequality and the role of top incomes have become ever more topical in research and policy debates since the seminal work of Piketty (2001, 2003) and Piketty and Saez (2003) two decades ago. Since then, the body of literature on the evolution of top income shares has greatly expanded for developed countries (Atkinson et al. 2011; Piketty 2015; Piketty and Zucman 2014) as well as for developing countries (Alvaredo and Gasparini 2015; Alvaredo and Londoo Vlez 2013; Burd
