An Impossibility Theorem for Wealth in Heterogeneous-agent Models with Limited Heterogeneity

John Stachurski and Alexis Akira Toda
Additional contact information
John Stachurski: Australian National University

No 151, 2019 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: It has been conjectured that canonical Bewley-Huggett-Aiyagari heterogeneous-agent models cannot explain the joint distribution of income and wealth. The results stated below verify this conjecture and clarify its implications under very general conditions. We show in particular that if (i) agents are infinitely-lived, (ii) saving is risk-free, and (iii) agents have constant discount factors, then the wealth distribution inherits the tail behavior of income shocks (e.g., light-tailedness or the Pareto exponent). Our restrictions on utility require only that relative risk aversion is bounded, and a large variety of income processes are admitted. Our results show conclusively that it is necessary to go beyond standard models to explain the empirical fact that wealth is heavier-tailed than income. We demonstrate through examples that relaxing any of the above three conditions can generate Pareto tails.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: An impossibility theorem for wealth in heterogeneous-agent models with limited heterogeneity (2019)
Working Paper: An Impossibility Theorem for Wealth in Heterogeneous-agent Models with Limited Heterogeneity (2019)
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:red:sed019:151

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2019 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().