Power law distributions are ubiquitous in socioeconomic contexts. While their general properties are well understood, it is often less clear why they regularly appear in empirical data. What are the generative mechanisms leading to power laws, how do they arise in the real world? This paper aims...

It is a well-known criticism that due to its exponential distribution, survey data on wealth is hardly reliable when it comes to analyzing the richest parts of society. This paper addresses this criticism using Austrian data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). In doing so...

This paper develops a new approach for dealing with the under-reporting of wealth in house- hold survey data (differential nonresponse). The current practice among researchers relying on household wealth survey data is one out of three approaches. First, simply ignore the problem. Second, fit a...