时间：2019年11月26日（周二）12:00-13:00

地点：同济大厦A楼505室

题目：Accounting for the determinants of wealth concentration in the US

主讲人：David Leung （台湾大学助理教授）

Abstract：

What are the fundamental determinants of the high level of wealth concentration in the US? The recent literature has put forward high concentration of labor income, capital income risk and bequests as potential reasons. We use data on the joint distribution of earnings, capital income and wealth to identify the quantitative importance of each driving force, and find that labor income concentration is the most important source of wealth dispersion for almost the entire distribution. Some heterogeneity in asset returns is required to match the factor composition of top incomes. It mostly contributes to the fat right tail of the wealth distribution, and to the share of the wealthiest 0.01% of households. These findings reflect the high correlation between earnings and wealth in the data, as well as the fact that earnings account for a large part of income even at the top of the income distribution.