[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/12873.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Socially Optimal Wealth Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Reichlin, Pietro
Abstract
I discuss two alternative notions of social welfare (utilitarian and self-enforcing) in a dynastic model with heterogeneous and persistent degrees of parental altruism and evaluate the implied levels of consumption inequality. Then, I study a decentralization of planning optima in a competitive equilibrium where the only source of inequality arises from intergenerational wealth transmission and I show that the self-enforcing criterion implies a negative tax rate on the less altruistic individuals’ capital income.

Suggested Citation

  • Reichlin, Pietro, 2018. "Socially Optimal Wealth Inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 12873, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12873
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP12873
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2010. "Progressive Estate Taxation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 635-673.
    2. Simon H. Boserup & Wojciech Kopczuk & Claus T. Kreiner, 2016. "The Role of Bequests in Shaping Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Danish Wealth Records," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 656-661, May.
    3. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joseph P. Lupton, 2007. "To Leave or Not to Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 207-235.
    4. Per Krusell & Anthony Smith & Joachim Hubmer, 2015. "The historical evolution of the wealth distribution: A quantitative-theoretic investigation," 2015 Meeting Papers 1406, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Andrew Atkeson & Robert E. Lucas, 1992. "On Efficient Distribution With Private Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(3), pages 427-453.
    6. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2007. "Inequality and Social Discounting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(3), pages 365-402.
    7. Soares, Jorge, 2015. "Borrowing constraints, parental altruism and welfare," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-20.
    8. B. Douglas Bernheim, 1989. "Intergenerational Altruism, Dynastic Equilibria and Social Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(1), pages 119-128.
    9. Christopher Phelan, 2006. "Opportunity and Social Mobility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(2), pages 487-504.
    10. Mariacristina De Nardi, 2004. "Wealth Inequality and Intergenerational Links," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 743-768.
    11. Sun, Gang, 2013. "Consumption Inequality and Discount Rate Heterogeneity," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-97, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    12. Kotlikoff, Laurence J & Summers, Lawrence H, 1981. "The Role of Intergenerational Transfers in Aggregate Capital Accumulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 706-732, August.
    13. Gang Sun, 2013. "Consumption Inequality and Discount Rate Heterogeneity," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201318, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    14. Bossmann, Martin & Kleiber, Christian & Walde, Klaus, 2007. "Bequests, taxation and the distribution of wealth in a general equilibrium model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1247-1271, August.
    15. Cordoba, Juan-Carlos, 2008. "U.S. inequality: Debt constraints or incomplete asset markets?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 350-364, March.
    16. Bisin, Alberto & Verdier, Thierry, 2001. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and the Dynamics of Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 298-319, April.
    17. Laitner, John & Juster, F Thomas, 1996. "New Evidence on Altruism: A Study of TIAA-CREF Retirees," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 893-908, September.
    18. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "Redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 59-83, October.
    19. Jellal, Mohamed & Wolff, Francois-Charles, 2002. "Cultural evolutionary altruism: theory and evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 241-262, June.
    20. Becker, Gary S & Tomes, Nigel, 1979. "An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(6), pages 1153-1189, December.
    21. Per Krusell & Anthony A. Smith & Jr., 1998. "Income and Wealth Heterogeneity in the Macroeconomy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 867-896, October.
    22. Davies, James B, 1986. "Does Redistribution Reduce Inequality?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(4), pages 538-559, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pietro Reichlin, 2020. "Social welfare, parental altruism, and inequality," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(5), pages 1391-1419, September.
    2. Davies, James B. & Lluberas, Rodrigo & Waldenström, Daniel, 2024. "Long-Term Trends in the Distribution of Wealth and Inheritance," Working Paper Series 1502, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    3. Wojciech Kopczuk, 2012. "Taxation of Intergenerational Transfers and Wealth," NBER Working Papers 18584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Mariacristina De Nardi & Giulio Fella, 2017. "Saving and Wealth Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 280-300, October.
    5. Elinder, Mikael & Erixson, Oscar & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 17-30.
    6. Boháček, Radim & Kejak, Michal, 2018. "Optimal government policies in models with heterogeneous agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 834-858.
    7. De Nardi, Mariacristina & Yang, Fang, 2016. "Wealth inequality, family background, and estate taxation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 130-145.
    8. Soares, Jorge, 2015. "Borrowing constraints, parental altruism and welfare," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-20.
    9. Caballé, Jordi & Moro-Egido, Ana I., 2021. "Do aspirations reduce differences in wealth accumulation?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    10. Kopczuk, Wojciech, 2016. "U.S. capital gains and estate taxation: a status report and directions for a reform," CEPR Discussion Papers 11208, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Fischer, Thomas, 2019. "Determinants of Wealth Inequality and Mobility in General Equilibrium," Working Papers 2019:22, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    12. Yunmin Chen & YiLi Chien & Michael T. Owyang, 2015. "Individual and Aggregate Constrained Efficient Intertemporal Wedges in Dynamic Mirrleesian Economies," Working Papers 2015-43, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    13. Vipul Bhatt & Masao Ogaki, 2012. "Tough Love And Intergenerational Altruism," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(3), pages 791-814, August.
    14. Graziella Bertocchi, 2011. "The Vanishing Bequest Tax: The Comparative Evolution Of Bequest Taxation In Historical Perspective," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 107-131, March.
    15. Rajnish Mehra & Facundo Piguillem & Edward C. Prescott, 2011. "Costly financial intermediation in neoclassical growth theory," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(1), pages 1-36, March.
    16. Shenghao Zhu, 2019. "A Becker–Tomes model with investment risk," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 951-981, June.
    17. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2016. "Savings After Retirement: A Survey," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 177-204, October.
    18. Thomas Epper & Ernst Fehr & Helga Fehr-Duda & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & David Dreyer Lassen & Søren Leth-Petersen & Gregers Nytoft Rasmussen, 2020. "Time Discounting and Wealth Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 1177-1205, April.
    19. Jess Benhabib & Shenghao Zhu, 2008. "Age, Luck, and Inheritance," NBER Working Papers 14128, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Ono, Taiki, 2024. "Bequests and wealth inequality in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wealth; Inequality; Capital taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12873. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.