Estimates of social insurance pension wealth are available for a number of Western economies, including Austria for the year 2017. Such wealth may be compared with conventional wealth in terms of size and distribution and when we add such estimates to measures of wealth in the conventional...

We study the effects of envy (relative consumption concerns), drawing on evidence that preferences typically exhibit present bias. We employ a Ramseytype model with agents who differ in initial capital endowments and account for present-biased envy: agents are naive and care about how their...

Flat tax systems have gained traction in countries that transitioned from socialism, with more than 20 nations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia adopting such systems since the mid-1990s. These reforms aimed to streamline tax processes, enhance compliance, and boost economic growth. While...

In the absence of a wealth register, Belgian wealth inequality needs to be estimated. Here I apply the mortality multiplier approach to Belgian inheritance tax tabulations and administrative microdata, collectively covering 1935 to 2022. Belgian wealth inequality has strongly declined during the...

We embed an experiment in a large-scale representative survey to investigate how relative wealth affects risk-taking and how this effect varies as a function of perceived control over life outcomes. Our results contest the common prediction of higher risk-taking in the middle of the...