TY - JOUR
T1 - Wealth distribution and social mobility in the US
T2 - A quantitative approach
AU - Benhabib, Jess
AU - Bisin, Alberto
AU - Luo, Mi
N1 - Funding Information:
* Benhabib: Department of Economics, New York University, 19 W 4th Street, FL 6, New York, NY 10012, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (email: jess.benhabib@nyu.edu); Bisin: Department of Economics, New York University, 19 W 4th Street, FL 6, New York, NY 10012, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (email: alberto.bisin@nyu.edu); Luo: Department of Economics, Emory University, 1602 Fishburne Drive, Atlanta, GA 30307 (email: mi.luo@emory.edu). Luigi Pistaferri was the coeditor for this paper. Thanks to seminar audiences at Duke, NYU, Minneapolis Fed, SED-Warsaw, Lake Baikal Summer School, SAET-Cambridge, University College of London, Wharton School, NBER Summer Institute. Special thanks to Alberto Alesina, Fernando Alvarez, Orazio Attanasio, Laurent Calvet, Tim Christensen, Tim Cogley, Mariacristina De Nardi, Pat Kehoe, Dirk Krueger, Per Krusell, Konrad Menzel, Ben Moll, Andrew Newman, Tom Sargent, Ananth Seshadri, Rob Shimer, Kevin Thom, Gianluca Violante, Daniel Xu, Fabrizio Zilibotti. Special thanks to Luigi Guiso, for many illuminating discussions and for spotting a mistake in a previous version, to the editor and the referees for their exceptional work on the paper. Generous financial support from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth is gratefully acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Phytopathological Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - We quantitatively identify the factors that drive wealth dynamics in the United States and are consistent with its skewed cross-sectional distribution and with social mobility. We concentrate on three critical factors: (i) skewed earnings, (ii) differential saving rates across wealth levels, and (iii) stochastic idiosyncratic returns to wealth. All of these are fundamental for matching both distribution and mobility. The stochastic process for returns which best fts the cross-sectional distribution of wealth and social mobility in the United States shares several statistical properties with those of the returns to wealth uncovered by Fagereng et al. (2017) from tax records in Norway.
AB - We quantitatively identify the factors that drive wealth dynamics in the United States and are consistent with its skewed cross-sectional distribution and with social mobility. We concentrate on three critical factors: (i) skewed earnings, (ii) differential saving rates across wealth levels, and (iii) stochastic idiosyncratic returns to wealth. All of these are fundamental for matching both distribution and mobility. The stochastic process for returns which best fts the cross-sectional distribution of wealth and social mobility in the United States shares several statistical properties with those of the returns to wealth uncovered by Fagereng et al. (2017) from tax records in Norway.
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U2 - 10.1257/aer.20151684
DO - 10.1257/aer.20151684
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067101512
SN - 0002-8282
VL - 109
SP - 1623
EP - 1647
JO - American Economic Review
JF - American Economic Review
IS - 5
ER -