Saving and wealth inequality
这篇综述梳理了影响储蓄和财富不平等的多种机制,包括遗产与人力资本传递、偏好差异、回报率差异、企业家精神、收入过程和医疗支出,并指出前两者、企业家精神和医疗支出风险是关键决定因素。
Why are some people wealthy while others are poor? To what extent can governments affect inequality? Which instruments should they use? Answering these questions requires understanding why people save. Dynamic quantitative models of wealth inequality can help us to understand and quantify the determinants of the outcomes that we observe in the data and to evaluate the consequences of policy reform. This paper surveys the savings mechanisms generated by the transmission of bequests and human capital, by preference heterogeneity, by rate of return heterogeneity, by entrepreneurship, by richer earnings processes, and by medical expenses. It concludes that the transmission of bequests and human capital, entrepreneurship, and medical-expense risk are crucial determinants of savings and wealth inequality and that we need to look at more data to measure their relative importance.