Individual preferences and the distribution of wealth

Luc Arrondel and André Masson
Additional contact information
André Masson: PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

PSE Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: For a sub-sample of French households of an Insee wealth survey, we obtain new and relative measures of 5 individual preference parameters : the risk "attitude" (aversion, prudence...), the rate of time depreciation over the life-cycle, the degree of short-term impatience, and the degrees of family and non family altruism. Short-term impatience and non family altruism are found no to affect wealth but, contrarily to recent results of behavioural analysis, the three other parameters have significant effects on wealth (financial, gross or net), which are consistent with theoretical predictions : wealth accumulation increases with the degree of prudence (precautionary saving), falls with time preference (life-cycle saving) and rises with the degree of family altruism (wealth intended for bequests). The way preferences are measured allows to get rid of potential causality problems and the joint explanatory power of the three parameters appears sizeable, although less important than the one of classic explanatory variables (age, income, social class and inheritance).

Keywords: risk aversion; time preference; altruism; wealth; inequalities; aversion au risque; préférence pour le présent; altruisme; patrimoine; inégalités (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-09
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00590723v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00590723v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Individual preferences and the distribution of wealth (2005)
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:hal:psewpa:halshs-00590723

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PSE Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().