This paper investigates the possibility that wealth (holdings of money) serves as a signal of ability to produce high … quality products for agents who cannot directly observe the quality of the products. A producer’s wealth may advertise past … such signaling effects may arise in equilibrium and may lead to more unequal distributions of wealth and lower welfare than …

This article investigates the possibility that wealth (holdings of money) serves as a signal of the ability to produce … high-quality products for agents who cannot directly observe the quality of the products. A producer's wealth may advertise … that such signaling effects may arise in equilibrium and may lead to more unequal distributions of wealth and lower welfare …

While inequality of opportunity (IOp) in earnings is well studied, the literature on IOp in individual net wealth is … wealth and income distribution can significantly diverge. We measure ex-ante IOp in net wealth for Germany using data from … wealth before effort is exerted. The SOEP allows for a direct mapping from individual circumstances to individual net wealth …