Volatile Top Income Shares in Switzerland? Reassessing the Evolution Between 1981 and 2008

Reto Foellmi and Isabel Martínez

No 1227, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: We study the recent evolution of top incomes in Switzerland. We close the data gap between 1993 and 2003 exploiting the fact that cantons changed their tax system at different points in time which allows us to use the non-changing cantons as control group. The results show that the share of top incomes has risen, the top 0.01% share even doubled in the last 20 years. However, top incomes exhibited large variation in the business cycle. We compare the results with social security data on top labor incomes for which the top shares can be measured precisely over the whole time span. The comparison confirms our initial findings and suggests that labor incomes have become more important among top income earners.

Keywords: Income inequality; wealth inequality; labor incomes; distribution and volatility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 O15 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 74 pages
Date: 2012-12, Revised 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv and nep-pbe
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:econwp:2012:27

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