Accounting for Wealth Concentration in the United States
结合收入与财富数据及世代交叠模型，发现劳动收入差距是美国财富集中的主因，遗产和资本回报率差异解释了最富家庭约一半的财富。
We assess the empirical relevance of different macroeconomic modeling approaches to wealth concentration, using the joint distribution of earnings, capital income, and net worth in combination with an OLG model of household heterogeneity. We find large earnings disparities to be the primary source of US wealth concentration. This reflects the fact that labor income, from salaries but also from entrepreneurship, is a major income source for top income and wealth groups in the data. Bequests and differences in rates of return on capital together explain about half the holdings of the wealthiest households.