Using unique administrative data that link privately held firm owners to rich background information, we provide novel evidence on underage children as firm owners. Ownership occurs at all ages 0--17, with a mean age of 12. Childhood ownership is strongly concentrated among high-income families,...

Der Siebte Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht (7. ARB) ist ein umfangreiches, datenbasiertes Werk, das viele relevante Lebensbereiche abdeckt - von Einkommen und Vermögen über Bildung, Gesundheit und Teilhabe bis hin zu neuen Themen wie Klimawandel und subjektiven Erfahrungen von Armut. Gleichzeitig...

The fifth wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) offers an updated and comprehensive view of Maltese households' financial position in the post-pandemic period. Based on microdata collected for 2023, this edition introduces two analytical dimensions: in addition to the...

We show that high-income buyers earn higher capital gains on housing using detailed transaction data from Denmark. Geographic location statistically accounts for nearly all the difference, with little role for aggregate market timing, property type, or other buyer characteristics. This finding...

We compare wealth taxes and capital gains taxes in a random growth model with idiosyncratic investment risk. At equal tax revenue, wealth taxes generate higher wealth inequality but also higher wealth mobility than capital gains taxes. The mechanism operates through variance: wealth taxes shift...

Die Alterssicherungskommission der Bundesregierung soll einerseits eine Kennziffer für das Gesamtversorgungsniveau aus gesetzlicher Rente, betrieblicher und geförderter Privatvorsorge entwickeln. Andererseits soll es darum gehen, wie der Lebensstandardsicherung im Alter gesichert werden kann....

Housing is the largest capital asset for most families. While the intergenerational mobility literature has extensively studied the income distribution, it has devoted less attention to housing, in part due to data limitations. We document 3 features of intergenerational mobility by comparing...

Die Alterssicherungskommission der Bundesregierung soll einerseits eine Kennziffer für das Gesamtversorgungsniveau aus gesetzlicher Rente, betrieblicher und geförderter Privatvorsorge entwickeln. Andererseits soll es darum gehen, wie der Lebensstandardsicherung im Alter gesichert werden kann....

Der Siebte Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht (7. ARB) ist ein umfangreiches, datenbasiertes Werk, das viele relevante Lebensbereiche abdeckt - von Einkommen und Vermögen über Bildung, Gesundheit und Teilhabe bis hin zu neuen Themen wie Klimawandel und subjektiven Erfahrungen von Armut. Gleichzeitig...

A growth mindset-a belief that intelligence is malleable rather than a fixed trait-is a crucial factor for educational success. I investigate whether a growth mindset also plays a role in students' post-graduation life outcomes, specifically, in the pursuit of higher education in a nationwide...

This study examines the long-term effects of higher national debt in South Korea on asset distribution. Using an overlapping generations general equilibrium model, we focus on two key channels: rising interest rates and falling wage rates, both driven by the crowding-out effect of capital....

Bartels, Jäger and Obergruber (2024) examine how division rules for the inheritance of agricultural land affected distributional outcomes in 19th century and contemporary Germany. The authors use a regression discontinuity design to show that equal-division counties-those in which inheritance...

The question of whether affluent households save at a higher rate than other parts of the distribution has been asked by economists on numerous occasions since the 1950s. It is standard in this research to define affluent, or "rich," households as those with high lifetime earnings or income to...

In recent decades, the United States has experienced a notable rise in markups, a slowdown in productivity growth, and an increase in wealth inequality. We present a framework that unifies these trends into a common driving force. In particular, increased barriers to entry raise markups and...

A growth mindset-a belief that intelligence is malleable rather than a fixed trait-is a crucial factor for educational success. I investigate whether a growth mindset also plays a role in students' post-graduation life outcomes, specifically, in the pursuit of higher education in a nationwide...

This paper investigates gender-related disparities in wealth in European Union countries using the 2010-2021 waves of the European Central Bank's Household Finance and Consumption Survey. To address the difficulty of within-household wealth allocation and provide a cleaner comparison of men and...

The purpose of this work is twofold: first, it aims to derive an exact analytical form of the Pareto index based on the already developed model of the economy as a scale-free network comprising a given amount of either wealth or income (total number of links, each link representing a non-zero...

Wealth inequality is not just an economic issue but a societal one. Ownership of assets can have significant implications for access to education, healthcare, housing and political influence. This study examines wealth inequality trends across EU Member States, using data from the European...

The strong evidence in support of the Great Gatsby Curve (i.e. the negative cross-sectional relationship between intergenerational mobility and inequality) seems to be at odds with the fact that large increases in inequality in the US have not resulted in decreases in mobility. We tackle this...

Using historical income and wealth data, we show that war reduces inequality: the top-1% income share falls by 20% and the top-1% wealth share by 10%. We measure three key drivers of inequality - capital destruction, taxation, and inflation - in the data and quantify their role with a...