CEF.UP - ECO Seminar | Webinar - Consumption, Wealth, and Income Inequality: A Tale of Tails

Tuesday, September 24th 2024 | 1:00 pm | room 305 | online

Consumption, Wealth, and Income Inequality: A Tale of Tails

Christian Hellwig – Toulouse School of Economics (France), CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research (E.U.)

“We provide evidence that the distributions of consumption, labor income, wealth, and capital income exhibit asymptotic power-law behavior with a strict ranking of upper tail inequality, in that order, from the least to the most unequal. We show analytically and quantitatively that the canonical heterogeneous-agent model cannot replicate the proper ranking and magnitudes of these four tails simultaneously. Mechanisms addressing the wealth concentration puzzle in these models through return heterogeneity lead to a mirror consumption concentration puzzle. We match the cross-sectional data on these four Pareto tails by positing a combination of non-homothetic, wealth-dependent preferences and scale-dependent returns to capital. We underscore the importance of these results by showing that all four dimensions of top inequality jointly determine the long-run elasticity that governs the revenue-maximizing capital tax rate.”

Any questions please contact cefup.sec@fep.up.pt.

“Cef.up is financed by Portuguese public funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., in the framework of the project with reference UIDB/04105/2020”