Most studies have looked at the distribution of well-being or its change over time in terms of income. However, family wealth is also an indicator of well-being, independent of the direct financial income it provides. There are four reasons. First, owner-occupied housing provides services directly to their owner. Second, wealth is a source of consumption, independent of the direct money income ...

Abstract We recast the Aiyagari–Bewley–Huggett model of income and wealth distribution in continuous time. This workhorse model—as well as heterogeneous agent models more generally—then boils down to a system partial differential equations, fact we take advantage make two types contributions. First, number new theoretical results: (1) an analytic characterization consumption saving behaviour po...

For the past year academics and policy makers have been discussing Thomas Piketty’s economics bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It documents the considerable rise over the past 40 years in national wealth relative to national income in the eight richest economies – the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Australia. For each of these countr...

Abstract We analyse top income and wealth shares data, by conducting a robust estimation of trends, tests for structural breaks, determining persistence. include Anglo-Saxon countries, continental Europe Asian grouped under different percentiles deciles, spanning period that is at least close to century. find the almost all countries are characterised broken or level shifts. The preponderance t...

This paper uses restrictions implied by cointegration to identify the permanent and transitory elements (the “trendÔand “cyclicalÔ) of household asset wealth. We focus our attention on a cointegrated system of three aggregate variables that are clearly central to the behavior of household spending: consumption, asset wealth and labor earnings. Because this cointegrated system is motivated by a ...