Income inequality is on the rise, and everyone, from President Obama and Pope Francis to Prince Charles and Standard & Poor's, is talking about it. But these conversations about what are arguably the most significant changes in the distribution of incomes and earnings since the 1940s are leading...

87 percent of Canadians who in 1990 had incomes in the lowest quintile, in 2009 had incomes that placed them in higher quintiles. Of those in the highest quintile, 36 percent had moved to lower ones. All Canadians have been getting richer, the poor more than the rich; the middle class has not...

How much of income inequality is due to initial opportunities relative to adult income risk? What factors determine intergenerational mobility? We study these questions with particular interest in the impact of two family choices: fertility and transfers. Fertility rates, which are higher for...

This paper explores the estimation of a class of life-cycle discrete choice intergenerational models. It proposes a new semiparametric estimator. It shows that it is root-N-consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. We compare our estimator with a modified version of the full solution...

We study the impact of income taxation on intergenerational income correlation. We estimate a life cycle dynastic model and conduct counterfactual analysis to observe the effects of various tax regimes. Compared to a no tax environment, a flat tax regime reduces the correlation only by one...

Mounting empirical evidence shows that kids of self-employed parents are very likely to become entrepreneurs themselves. These findings are often attributed to the intergenerational transmission of parental norms and values. However, many papers in the field are not that explicit about parental...

We study empirically whether there is scope for parents to shape the economic preferences and attitudes of their children through purposeful investments. We exploit information on the risk and trust attitudes of parents and their children, as well as rich information about parental efforts in...

This paper explores the estimation of a class of life‐cycle discrete choice dynastic models. It provides a new representation of the value function for these class of models. It compare a multistage conditional choice probability (CCP) estimator based on the new value function representation...

To understand the socio-economic enrollment gap in university attendance, we elicit students’ beliefs about the benefits of university education in a sample of 2,540 secondary school students. Our choice model estimates reveal that perceived non-pecuniary benefits explain a large share of the...

We study the role played by the standard of living during childhood on nest leaving. Using data from SHARE, we show empirically that individuals who grew up in a golden nest leave the parental home later and that education only partially mediates this effect. This relationship holds across...