Zipf's Law, Pareto's Law, and the Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States
构建了一个新古典增长模型，从企业层面的生产率冲击同时推导出收入分布的帕累托定律和企业规模分布的齐普夫定律，并用该模型评估了税率变化如何解释美国顶层收入的演变。
We construct a tractable neoclassical growth model that generates Pareto's law of income distribution and Zipf's law of the firm size distribution from idiosyncratic, firm-level productivity shocks. Executives and entrepreneurs invest in risk-free assets, as well as their own firms' risky stocks, through which their wealth and income depend on firm-level shocks. By using the model, we evaluate how changes in tax rates can account for the evolution of top incomes in the United States. The model matches the decline in the Pareto exponent of the income distribution and the trend of the top 1 percent income share in recent decades.