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The Income Fluctuation Problem and the Evolution of Wealth

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  • Qingyin Ma
  • John Stachurski
  • Alexis Akira Toda
Abstract
We analyze the household savings problem in a general setting where returns on assets, non-financial income and impatience are all state dependent and fluctuate over time. All three processes can be serially correlated and mutually dependent. Rewards can be bounded or unbounded and wealth can be arbitrarily large. Extending classic results from an earlier literature, we determine conditions under which (a) solutions exist, are unique and are globally computable, (b) the resulting wealth dynamics are stationary, ergodic and geometrically mixing, and (c) the wealth distribution has a Pareto tail. We show how these results can be used to extend recent studies of the wealth distribution. Our conditions have natural economic interpretations in terms of asymptotic growth rates for discounting and return on savings.

Suggested Citation

  • Qingyin Ma & John Stachurski & Alexis Akira Toda, 2019. "The Income Fluctuation Problem and the Evolution of Wealth," Papers 1905.13045, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1905.13045
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    Cited by:

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    2. Brendan K. Beare & Alexis Akira Toda, 2022. "Determination of Pareto Exponents in Economic Models Driven by Markov Multiplicative Processes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1811-1833, July.
    3. Thomas J. Sargent & John Stachurski, 2024. "Dynamic Programming: Finite States," Papers 2401.10473, arXiv.org.
    4. Guerra Vallejos, Ernesto & Bobenrieth Hochfarber, Eugenio & Bobenrieth Hochfarber, Juan & Wright, Brian D., 2021. "Solving dynamic stochastic models with multiple occasionally binding constraints," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    5. Beare, Brendan K & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2020. "On the emergence of a power law in the distribution of COVID-19 cases," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt9k5027d0, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    6. Ma, Qingyin & Stachurski, John & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2022. "Unbounded dynamic programming via the Q-transform," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    7. Liu, Haoyu & Li, Lun, 2023. "On the concavity of consumption function under habit formation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    8. Ma, Qingyin & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2022. "Asymptotic linearity of consumption functions and computational efficiency," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    9. Ji Hyung Lee & Yuya Sasaki & Alexis Akira Toda & Yulong Wang, 2021. "Fixed-k Tail Regression: New Evidence on Tax and Wealth Inequality from Forbes 400," Papers 2105.10007, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2022.
    10. Selahattin Imrohoroglu, 2023. "Mpk," CIGS Working Paper Series 24-002E, The Canon Institute for Global Studies.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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