24,453 research outputs found
Understanding the U.S. distribution of wealth
No full textThis article describes the current state of economic theory intended to explain the unequal distribution of wealth among U.S. households. The models reviewed are heterogeneous agent versions of standard neoclassical growth models with uninsurable idiosyncratic shocks to earnings. The models endogenously generate differences in asset holdings as a result of the household's desire to smooth consumption while earnings fluctuate. Both of the dominant types of models--dynastic and life cycle models--reproduce the U.S. wealth distribution poorly. The article describes several features recently proposed as additions to the theory based on changes in earnings, including business ownership, higher rates of return on high asset levels, random capital gains, government programs to guarantee a minimum level of consumption, and changes in health and marital status. None of these features has been fully analyzed yet, but they all seem to have potential to move the models in the right direction.Wealth
Updated facts on the U.S. distributions of earnings, income, and wealth
No full textWealth ; Income distribution
Dimensions of inequality: facts on the U.S. distributions of earnings, income, and wealth
No full textThis article describes some facts about financial inequality in the United States that a good theory of inequality must be able to explain. These include the facts that labor earnings, income, and wealth are all unequally distributed among U.S. households, but the distributions are significantly different. Wealth is much more concentrated than the other two. Wealth is positively correlated with earnings and income, but not strongly. The movement of households up and down the economic scale is greater when measured by income than by earnings or wealth. Differences across the three variables remain when the data are disaggregated by age, employment status, educational level, and marital status of the heads of U.S. households. Each of these classifications also has significant differences across households. All the facts are based on data taken from the 1992 Survey of Consumer Finances and the 1984–85 and 1989–90 Panel Study of Income Dynamics.Income distribution ; Wealth
The Research Agenda: Determinants of Inequality
No full textJosé-Víctor Ríos-Rull is Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His main interests lie in distributional issues in macroeconomics, public economics and demographic economics.
Consumption Taxes and Redistribution
No full textIt is relatively well known that the introduction of consumption taxation as an alternative in the tax code, and as the main source of government revenues, leads to a more efficient tax system.
However the conventional wisdom is that the change from the actual tax code, based on taxation of capital and labor income to this consumption based system, has undesirable distributional consequences. In this work a very simple method is developed to argue that the converse is the most reasonable outcome from that fundamental tax reform. The main difference in relation to the literature comes from the assumed source of household heterogeneity. Additionally it is shown that the inclusion of a tax on consumption allows for redistributive policies with no costs in terms of efficiency.
Unemployment spells and income distribution dynamics
No full textIn the U.S., during the 1948-86 period, an approximation to the Gini Index based on the quintiles and on the top 5% of the income distribution yielded a value of 0.351. Further, during this same period, the income share earned by the first quintile was procyclical and 7% more volatile than aggregate yearly output. In this paper we quantify the role played by unemployment spells in determining these and other related issues. To this purpose, we use an extension of the general equilibrium stochastic growth model that includes an endogenous distribution of households indexed by wealth and employment status. Our main findings are the following: i) in a model economy where all households have the same endowments of skills and are subject to the same employment processes, uninsured unemployment spells alone account for a very small share of the concentration of income observed in the U.S., and of the income distribution dynamics -the approximated Gini Index in this model economy is 18% of the one observed in the U.S., and the income share earned by the first quintile is 58% more volatile, ii) this result is robust to including a technology that allows for cyclically moving factor shares, and iii) in a model economy where households are partitioned into different skills groups that are subject to different employment processes in accordance to U.S. data, unemployment spells account for a significantly greater share of the U.S. statistics -the approximated Gini Index in this model economy is 70% of the one observed in the U.S., and the income share earned by the first quintile is 10% more volatile
HABIT FORMATION: INPLICATIONS FOR THE WEALTH DISTRIBUTION
No full textIn this paper we study the role of habit formation in shaping the wealth distribution in an otherwise standard heterogeneous agents model economy with idiosyncratic uncertainty. We compare the inplications for precautionary savings and for wealth concentration between economies that only differ in the role played by habit formation. Once preferences are properly adjusted so that the Intertemporal Elasticity of Substituion is the same in all model economies studied, we find that habit formation brings a hefty increase in precautionary savings and very mild reductions in the coefficient of variation and in the Gini index of wealth. We also find that the reductions in these measures of inequality also hold when we adjust our economy so that aggregate savings are the same as in the economy without habit formation. These findings hold for both persistent and non persistent habits although for the former the quantitative size of the effects is much larger. We conclude that habit formation, while being a mechanism that increases the amount of precautionary savings generated in a model, does not change the implications for wealth inequality that arise from standard models.
Informe de Comisión al Nevado de Chañi del Ayudante del Dr. Juan C.M. Turner, Sr. José Manuel Calvelo Ríos
No full textFil: Calvelo Ríos, José Manuel. Ministerio de Economía de la Nación. Secretaría de Estado de Industria y Minería. Subsecretaría de Minería. Dirección Nacional de Geología y Minería; Argentina
Víctor de los Ríos, Ajenjo y la madera
No full textArtículo periodístico publicado en el Diario de León en el que se aborda la figura del escultor Víctor de los Ríos y uno de sus seguidores como es el imaginero José Ajenjo, con motivo de una exposición de maquetas del artista cántabro realizada durante la primavera de 1999 en la localidad leonesa de Mansilla de la Mulas. Del mismo modo, se efectúa una reflexión sobre la calidad de las imágenes exhibidas en los cortejos devocionales de la ciudad de León y la conveniencia de promover una Comisión de Arte que vele por la exigencia plástica de los mismos
Percepción de los reality shows “combate” y “esto es guerra” y su influencia en el comportamiento de los estudiantes de secundaria de las i.e. n° 80820 “víctor larco” y n° 81025 “josé antonio encinas”, víctor larco
No full textLa presente investigación tiene por objetivo principal determinar la influencia de los reality shows “Combate” y “Esto es Guerra” en el comportamiento en los estudiantes de nivel secundario de las I. E. Nº 80820 “Víctor Larco” y Nº 81025 “José Antonio Encinas”, ubicadas en el distrito Víctor Larco. El problema que se observó en los adolescentes es que han asimilado actitudes, hábitos, lenguaje y valores de dichos programas, por lo que determinaremos si su influencia es positiva o negativa, El diseño es no experimental transversal, de tipo correlacional. La población a estudiar son los estudiantes de nivel secundario de las Instituciones Educativas Nº 80820 “Víctor Larco” y Nº 81025 “José Antonio Encinas” del distrito de Víctor Larco, y la muestra seleccionada es de 238 alumnos distribuidos entre los colegios mencionados. Se obtuvo como conclusión principal que la influencia de los reality shows “Combate” y “Esto es Guerra” en el comportamiento en los estudiantes de nivel secundario de las I.E. “Víctor Larco” y “José Antonio Encinas”, es negativa, lo cual comprueba nuestra hipótesis de investigación
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