We document in US data that returns to wealth across households are significantly heterogeneous, and persistently so. Motivated by this observation, we build a tractable general equilibrium model where households face persistent idiosyncratic returns to study the US wealth distribution. We show...

Under limited commitment that prevents agents from pledging their future non-financial wealth, agents with incorrect beliefs always survive by holding on to their non-financial wealth. Friedman (1953)'s market selection hypothesis suggests that their financial wealth trends towards zero in the...