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Piketty's Book and Macro Models of Wealth Inequality

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  • Mariacristina De Nardi
  • Giulio Fella
  • Fang Yang

Abstract

Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, discusses several factors affecting wealth inequality: rates of return on capital, output growth rates, tax progressivity, top income shares, and heterogeneity in saving rates and inheritances. This paper studies the role of various forces affecting savings in quantitative models of wealth inequality, discusses their successes and failures in accounting for the observed facts, and compares these model's implications with Piketty's conclusions.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariacristina De Nardi & Giulio Fella & Fang Yang, 2015. "Piketty's Book and Macro Models of Wealth Inequality," NBER Working Papers 21730, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21730
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    Cited by:

    1. Krueger, D. & Mitman, K. & Perri, F., 2016. "Macroeconomics and Household Heterogeneity," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 843-921, Elsevier.
    2. Zhao, Kai, 2017. "Social insurance, private health insurance and individual welfare," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 102-117.
    3. Philipp Korom, 2019. "A bibliometric visualization of the economics and sociology of wealth inequality: a world apart?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 849-868, March.
    4. MADSEN, Jakob B, 2018. "Is Inequality Increasing in r-g? The Dynamics of Capital’s Income Share in the UK, 1210-2013," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-70, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    5. Kaymak, Barış & Poschke, Markus, 2016. "The evolution of wealth inequality over half a century: The role of taxes, transfers and technology," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1-25.
    6. Dirk Krueger & Kurt Mitman & Fabrizio Perri, 2016. "On the Distribution of the Welfare Losses of Large Recessions," NBER Working Papers 22458, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Anand Sahasranaman & Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen, 2019. "Dynamics of reallocation within India's income distribution," Papers 1909.04452, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    8. Dabla-Norris, Era & Ji, Yan & Townsend, Robert M. & Filiz Unsal, D., 2021. "Distinguishing constraints on financial inclusion and their impact on GDP, TFP, and the distribution of income," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 1-18.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

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