Economies of Scale for Household Wealth: An Analysis of Equivalence Scales
提出方法并利用德国数据估计家庭财富的规模经济效应，发现财富效用储蓄的规模经济较高，考虑该效应后德国财富不平等程度有所上升。
ABSTRACT Measures of private wealth often refer to households or tax‐units, but how does household wealth relate to individual welfare? Analogous to household economies of scale for consumption, this paper offers a methodology and empirical results to account for household wealth scale effects. These scale effects vary depending on the purpose of savings: funding consumption versus holding wealth for motives such as status (wealth‐in‐utility savings). Using the German Socio‐Economic Panel's stated preference data, I estimate that economies of scale for wealth‐in‐utility savings are high. In addition, the paper offers an empirical application with regard to inequality measurement. As high wealth‐in‐utility economies of scale dominate among the wealthy, estimates of inequality tend to increase. Accounting for scale effects has moderate effects on the Gini index and top wealth shares in Germany, but reduces the wealth share of the bottom 50% of the distribution by up to half.