How Risky Are Recessions for Top Earners?

Fatih Guvenen, Greg Kaplan and Jae Song ()

American Economic Review, 2014, vol. 104, issue 5, 148-53

Abstract: How sensitive to business cycles are the earnings of top earners? And, how does the business cycle sensitivity of top earners vary by industry? We use a confidential dataset on earnings histories of US males from the Social Security Administration. On average, individuals in the top 1 percent of the earnings distribution are slightly more cyclical than the population average. But there are large differences across sectors; top earners in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) and Construction face substantial business cycle volatility, whereas those in Services (who make up 40 percent of individuals in the top 1 percent) have earnings that are less cyclical than the average worker.

JEL-codes: E32 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.148
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.104.5.148 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/10405/P2014_1091_data.zip (application/zip)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10405/P2014_1091_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: How Risky Are Recessions for Top Earners? (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:5:p:148-53

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().