wealth concentration over the path of development sweden 1873 2006 we study wealth concentration in sweden over 130 years from the beginning of industrialization until the present day our series are based on new evidence from estate and wealth tax data foreign and domestic family firm wealth and pension wealth estimates we find that swedish wealth concentration was high in the agrarian state and changed little during early industrialization from world war i until about 1950 the richest percentile lost ground to high income earners in the rest of the top wealth decile this equalization continued postwar the entire top decile lost out relative to the rest of the population around 1980 wealth compression stopped and inequality increased we approximate the effects of international flows and find that the recent increase in wealth inequality is probably larger than what official estimates suggest

voluntary disclosure of evaded taxes increasing revenue or increasing incentives to evade many countries apply lower fines to tax evading individuals when they voluntarily disclose the tax evasion they committed i model such voluntary disclosure mechanisms theoretically and show that while such mechanisms increase the incentive to evade taxes they nevertheless increase tax revenues net of administrative costs i confirm the importance of administrative costs in a survey of german competent local tax authorities i then test the effects of voluntary disclosure on the tax evasion decision using the introduction of the 2009 offshore voluntary disclosure program in the u s for identification the analysis confirms that the introduction of voluntary disclosure increases tax evasion

the missing dark matter in the wealth of nations and its implications for global imbalances current account statistics may not be good indicators of the evolution of a country s net foreign assets and of its external position s sustainability the value of existing assets may vary independently of current account flows so called return privileges may allow some countries to obtain abnormal returns and mismeasurement of fdi unreported trade of insurance or liquidity services and debt relief may also play a role we analyse the relevant evidence in a large set of countries and periods and examine measures of net foreign assets obtained by capitalizing the net investment income and then estimating the current account from the changes in this stock of foreign assets we call dark matter the difference between our measure of net foreign assets and that measured by official statistics we find it to be important for many countries analyse its relationship with theoretically relevant factors and note that the resulting perspective tends to make global net asset positions appear relatively stable ricardo hausmann and federico sturzenegger

external balances trade and financial conditions abstract i present a new model for the u s external position that accounts for the accumulation of international debt over the past 60 years the model is based on the present value restriction that links a country s external position to future trade flows and financial conditions in the absence of arbitrage opportunities and ponzi schemes it features the role played by the stochastic discount factor the trade and valuation adjustment channels and provides a decomposition of the u s external position into secular and cyclical components the model shows that shocks operating via the valuation channel are the dominant drivers of cyclical dynamics accounting for approximately 80 of the variance over the 60 year sample this channel works primarily via capital gains and losses on u s foreign assets and is closely tied to the international value of the u s dollar in contrast there is no evidence that valuation channel adjustments contribute to the secular dynamics but differences between the average returns on foreign assets and liabilities raise the steady state debt to gdp ratio from approximately 12 to 15 the long term deterioration in the u s position represents a move towards the steady state before the early 1990s and a move away from the steady state thereafter i quantify the expected improvement in future u s trade balances needed to justify this as a sustainable path and show that they are very different from its actual behavior during the last 60 years i also study the behavior of the u s position during the 2007 2008 financial crisis

neither a borrower nor a lender does china s zero net foreign asset position make economic sense china in the past few years has emerged as a net foreign creditor on the international scene with net foreign assets slightly greater than zero percent of wealth this is surprising given that china is a relatively poor country with a capital labor ratio about one fifth the world average and one tenth the u s level the main questions that the authors address are whether it makes economic sense for china to be a net creditor and how they see china s net foreign asset position evolving over the next 20 years they calibrate a theoretical model of international capital flows featuring diminishing returns production risk and sovereign risk the calibrations for china yield a predicted net foreign asset position of 17 percent of china s wealth the authors also estimate nonstructural cross country regressions of determinants of net foreign assets in which china is always a significant outlier with 5 to 7 percentage points more of net foreign assets relative to wealth than is predicted by its characteristics china s extensive capital controls can explain why its current net foreign asset position is far away from what is predicted by open economy models and cross country empirics it seems reasonable to assume that china s international financial integration will increase over time the authors calibrate and predict different scenarios out to 2025 these scenarios are necessarily speculative but it is interesting that they typically imply negative net foreign asset positions between 3 and 9 percent of wealth what may be counter intuitive for many policymakers is that successful institutional reform and productivity growth are likely to lead to more negative net foreign asset positions than occurs with stagnation starting from china s zero net foreign assets position it would take current account deficits in the range of 2 5 percent of gdp to reach any of these net foreign assets positions these are not unreasonable deficits but they require a large adjustment from the present 6 percent of gdp current account surplus

who owns the wealth in tax havens macro evidence and implications for global inequality abstract drawing on newly published macroeconomic statistics this paper estimates the amount of household wealth owned by each country in offshore tax havens the equivalent of 10 of world gdp is held in tax havens globally but this average masks a great deal of heterogeneity from a few percent of gdp in scandinavia to about 15 in continental europe and 60 in gulf countries and some latin american economies we use these estimates to construct revised series of top wealth shares in ten countries which account for close to half of world gdp because offshore wealth is very concentrated at the top accounting for it increases the top 0 01 wealth share substantially in europe even in countries that do not use tax havens extensively it has considerable effects in russia where the vast majority of wealth at the top is held offshore these results highlight the importance of looking beyond tax and survey data to study wealth accumulation among the very rich in a globalized world

wealth inequality preference heterogeneity and macroeconomic volatility in two sector economies we explore the link between wealth inequality preference heterogeneity and macroeconomic volatility in a two sector neoclassical growth model first we prove that if agents have homogeneous preferences when the absolute risk tolerance is a strictly convex concave function sufficiently high low levels of wealth inequality may lead to endogenous fluctuations in the neighborhood of the steady state second we consider the effects of preference heterogeneity when agents are homogeneous with respect to their wealth we show that when the utility function belongs to the hara class sufficiently high levels of preference heterogeneity may lead to endogenous fluctuations in the neighborhood of the steady state if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is greater than one

micro and macro elasticities in a life cycle model with taxes we build a life cycle model of labor supply that incorporates changes along both the intensive and extensive margin and use it to assess the consequences of changes in tax and transfer policies on equilibrium hours of work we find that changes in taxes have large aggregate effects on hours of work moreover we find that there is no inconsistency between this result and the empirical finding of small labor elasticities for prime age workers in our model micro and macro elasticities are effectively unrelated our model is also consistent with other cross country patterns

discounting and long run behavior global bifurcation analysis of a family of dynamical systems abstract this paper is concerned with the relationship between the discount rate and the nature of long run behavior in dynamic optimization models the theory is developed under two conditions the first is history independence which rules out multiple limit sets the second is a condition that avoids the reversion to a stable steady state as the discount factor is lowered once cycles have emerged these conditions appear to be the minimal restrictions that would allow analysis by a bifurcation diagram the results are illustrated by two well known examples in this literature due to sutherland and weitzman samuelson journal of economic literature classification numbers c61 d90 041

capital is back wealth income ratios in rich countries 1700 2010 how do aggregate wealth to income ratios evolve in the long run and why we address this question using 1970 2010 national balance sheets recently compiled in the top eight developed economies for the united states united kingdom germany and france we are able to extend our analysis as far back as 1700 we find in every country a gradual rise of wealth income ratios in recent decades from about 200 300 in 1970 to 400 600 in 2010 in effect today s ratios appear to be returning to the high values observed in europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 600 700 this can be explained by a long run asset price recovery itself driven by changes in capital policies since the world wars and by the slowdown of productivity and population growth in line with the s g harrod domar solow formula that is for a given net saving

taxing across borders tracking personal wealth and corporate profits globalization is making it increasingly easy for corporations to shift profits to low tax countries modern technology has also made it simpler for wealthy individuals to move funds to undeclared bank accounts in offshore tax havens both issues have featured prominently in the news and global economic debates since the financial crisis but the arguments tend to be based on relatively little empirical evidence measuring the costs of tax havens to foreign governments is fraught with difficulties however balance of payments data and corporate filings show that us companies are shifting profits to bermuda luxembourg and similar countries on a large and growing scale about 20 percent of all us corporate profits are now booked in such havens a tenfold increase since the 1980s this profit shifting is typically done within the letter of the law and thus would be best described as tax avoidance rather than fraud i attempt to quantify its cost for government coffers by taking a fresh look at the most recent macroeconomic evidence and combining it in a systematic manner over the last 15 years the effective corporate tax rate of us companies has declined from 30 to 20 percent and about two thirds of this decline can be attributed to increased profit shifting to low tax jurisdictions wealthy individuals too use tax havens sometimes legally to benefit from banking services not available in their home country and sometimes illegally to evade taxes a number of changes have sought with some success to curb that form of tax evasion over the last years yet the available evidence from switzerland and

cross border tax evasion after the common reporting standard game over back in 2013 the automatic exchange of information aeoi was endorsed as the prevailing universal solution to fight cross border tax evasion in this regard the oecd launched a global standard for the aeoi the common reporting standard crs currently around 100 jurisdictions have committed to implement it into respective national laws by 2018 in this study we analyze the impact of the crs on cross border tax evasion using a difference in difference research design by considering a period of four years 2014 2017 results suggest that the crs induced a reduction of 14 in cross border deposits parked in offshore locations for tax evasion purposes moreover such wealth and related income has not been repatriated but rather a new location to avoid domestic tax obligations has emerged more specifically upon the crs implementation at domestic level the united states u s i e the only major economy in the world which so far did not commit to the crs seems to emerge as a potentially attractive location for cross border tax evasion

the missing wealth of nations are europe and the u s net debtors or net creditors this paper shows that official statistics substantially underestimate the net foreign asset positions of rich countries because they fail to capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens drawing on systematic anomalies in portfolio investment positions and a unique swiss dataset i find that 8 of the global financial wealth of households is held in tax havens 6 of which goes unrecorded on the basis of plausible assumptions accounting for unrecorded assets turns the eurozone officially the world s second largest net debtor into a net creditor it also reduces the u s net debt significantly the results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor to rich capital flows external assets are now in poor countries and debts in rich countries i provide concrete proposals to improve international investment statistics

the level and distribution of global household wealth the level of average household wealth in all countries is estimated via the determinants of assets and debts for 39 countries which have balance sheet or survey data the distribution of wealth in all countries is inferred from information on the pattern of wealth ownership for 20 countries covering 59 of world population combining the level and distribution figures suggests that median global wealth was ppp 8 635 in the year 2000 and that ppp 518 361 was needed to belong to the top percentile the top decile owned 71 of world wealth and the global gini value was 0 802

unlocking the gates of paradise general equilibrium effects of information exchange abstract in a move to reduce bank secrecy and fight international tax evasion about 100 tax jurisdictions have so far committed to implement a new standard on the automatic exchange of information aeoi this paper examines the quantitative consequences of the aeoi for an onshore country using a neoclassical model with an offshore financial center our main findings are i the aeoi increases government revenues but reduces welfare ii welfare improves when using the aeoi revenues to reduce tax pressure or when including household wealth inequality iii government revenues increase further when accounting for a disclosure penalty cost these results depend on the general equilibrium effects absent from earlier papers on offshore financial centers

taxation and the international mobility of inventors we study the eect of top tax rates on superstar inventors international mobility since 1977 using panel data on inventors from the u s and european patent oces we exploit the dierential impact of changes in top tax rates on inventors of dierent qualities superstar inventors location choices are signicantly aected by top tax rates in our preferred specication the elasticity to the net of tax rate of the number of domestic superstar inventors is around 0 03 while that of foreign superstar inventors is around 1 these elasticities are larger for inventors in multinational companies an inventor is less sensitive to taxes in a country if his company performs a higher share of its research there

wealth distribution and output fluctuations we explore the link between wealth inequality and output fluctuations in a general two sector neoclassical growth model with endogenous labor and heterogeneous agents when agents have homogeneous crra preferences and individual wealth is pareto distributed a sufficiently large rise in the gini index typically leads to an increase in endogenous fluctuations of output for general economies we show that under plausible conditions on the fundamentals wealth inequality is still a destabilizing factor

on the long run evolution of inheritance france 1820 2050 this paper attempts to document and account for the long run evolution of inheritance we find that in a country like france the annual flow of inheritance was about 20 25 of national income between 1820 and 1910 down to less than 5 in 1950 and back up to about 15 by 2010 a simple theoretical model of wealth accumulation growth and inheritance can fully account for the observed u shaped pattern and levels using this model we find that under plausible assumptions the annual bequest flow might reach about 20 25 of national income by 2050 this corresponds to a capitalized bequest share in total wealth accumulation well above 100 our findings illustrate the fact that when the growth rate g is small and when the rate of return to private wealth r is permanently and substantially larger than the growth rate say r 4 5 vs g 1 2 which was the case in the 19th century and early 20th century and is likely to happen again in the 21st century then past wealth and inheritance are bound to play a key role for aggregate wealth accumulation and the structure of lifetime inequality contrarily to a widely spread view modern economic growth did not kill inheritance

taxing the rich affluent households can respond to taxation with means that are not economically viable for the rest of the population such as sophisticated tax plans and international tax arbitrage this article studies an economy in which an inequality averse social planner faces agents who have access to a tax avoidance technology with subadditive costs and who can shape the risk profile of their income as they see fit subadditive avoidance costs imply that optimal taxation cannot be progressive at the top this in turn may trigger excessive risk taking when the avoidance technology consists in costly migration between two countries that compete fiscally we show that an endogenous increase in inequality due to risk taking makes progressive taxation more fragile which vindicates in turn risk taking and can lead to equilibria with regressive tax rates at the top and high migrations of wealth towards the smaller country

poverty traps indeterminacy and the wealth distribution we consider a one sector growth model in continuous time with a production externality and endogenous labor supply there is a continuum of households who have identical preferences but differ with respect to their initial wealth we show that there exist economies such that an indeterminate steady state exists for some wealth distribution but not for others a second result is that a redistribution of wealth may drive the economy from a steady state with strictly positive output to a poverty trap in which output converges asymptotically to zero these results indicate that differences in the wealth distribution may be responsible for drastic differences in the long run standard of living journal of economic literature classification numbers d31 d50 o41

ramsey equilibrium in a two sector model with heterogeneous households abstract we prove an existence theorem for a stationary perfect foresight equilibrium under borrowing constraints in a two sector model with infinitely lived heterogeneous agents the most patient agent holds all the capital in this solution we also show that if the capital goods sector is capital intensive and capital income is increasing in the aggregate capital stock then the aggregate capital stock eventually is monotonic and converges to the steady state stock if the consumption goods sector is more capital intensive and capital income is increasing in aggregate capital we prove convergence to the steady state under more restrictive conditions periodic equilibria are shown to exist under weaker hypotheses journal of economic literature classification numbers d52 d90 e13

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

determinacy of equilibria in dynamic models with finitely many consumers abstract we consider a production economy with a finite number of heterogeneous infinitely lived consumers we show that if the economy is smooth enough equilibria are locally unique for almost all endowments we do so by converting the infinite dimensional fixed point problem stated in terms of prices and commodities into a finite dimensional negishi problem involving individual weights in a social value function by adding artificial fixed factors to utility and production functions we can write the equilibrium conditions equating spending and income for each consumer entirely in terms of time zero factor endowments and derivatives of the social value function

technology capital and the us current account the u s bureau of economic analysis bea estimates the return on investments of foreign subsidiaries of u s multinational companies over the period 1982 2006 averaged 9 4 percent annually after taxes u s subsidiaries of foreign multinationals averaged only 3 2 percent two factors distort bea returns technology capital and plant specific intangible capital technology capital is accumulated know how from intangible investments in r d brands and organizations that can be used in foreign and domestic locations used abroad it generates profits for foreign subsidiaries with no foreign direct investment fdi plantspecific intangible capital in foreign subsidiaries is expensed abroad lowering current profits on fdi and increasing future profits we develop a multicountry general equilibrium model with an essential role for fdi and apply the bea s methodology to construct economic statistics for the model economy we estimate that mismeasurement of intangible investments accounts for over 60 percent of the difference in bea returns

on the dynamic implications of news shocks abstract this paper assesses the time series properties of rational expectations models with news shocks we show that news shocks allows to substantially improve the dynamic behavior of such models in generating higher persistence we also warn the use of svar models to uncover news shocks

current account deficits during heightened risk menacing or mitigating large current account deficits and the corresponding reliance on capital flows from abroad can increase a country s vulnerability to periods of heightened risk we develop a framework to evaluate such vulnerabilities and clarify which characteristics of a country s international investment portfolio determine whether a current account deficit is menacing or mitigating financial factors namely international investment income and valuation changes on international investments are critical our framework explores how domestic and global risk shocks affect these factors an application to 10 oecd economies shows that a substantial degree of international risk sharing can occur through current accounts and international portfolios

cross border returns differentials were the u s to persistently earn substantially more on its foreign investments u s claims than foreigners earn on their u s investments u s liabilities the likelihood that the current environment of sizeable global imbalances will evolve in a benign manner increases however we find that the returns differential of u s claims over u s liabilities is far smaller than previously reported and importantly is near zero for portfolio equity and debt securities for portfolio securities we confirm our finding using a separate dataset on the actual foreign equity and bond portfolios of u s investors and the u s equity and bond portfolios of foreign investors in the context of equity and bond portfolios we find no evidence that the u s can count on earning more on its claims than it pays on its liabilities finally we reconcile our finding of a near zero returns differential with observed patterns of cumulated current account deficits the net international investment position and the net income balance jel codes f3

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

the global concentration of wealth this paper compares changes in relative and absolute wealth concentrations to establish whether both processes have followed similar trajectories the findings indicate that while the relative wealth concentration level has increased in recent times it is not extraordinarily high from a historical perspective in contrast the absolute wealth concentration level is most likely higher than has ever previously occurred due to the growth of per capita wealth holdings and the population size of high net worth individuals hnwis the available data also suggest that hnwis recovered very quickly from the losses that they experienced in the financial crisis of 2008 as a result hnwis wealth holdings in 2013 were at least 30 higher than they were in 2007 the post crisis recovery of billionaires was even stronger with their 2014 net wealth holdings more than 85 higher than 2007 levels

growth in the shadow of expropriation we propose a tractable variant of the open economy neoclassical growth model that emphasizes political economy and contracting frictions the political economy frictions involve a preference for immediate spending while the contracting friction is a lack of commitment regarding foreign debt and expropriation we show that the political economy frictions slow an economy s convergence to the steady state due to the endogenous evolution of capital taxation the model rationalizes why openness has different implications for growth depending on the political environment why institutions such as the treatment of capital income evolve over time why governments in countries that grow rapidly accumulate net foreign assets rather than liabilities and why foreign aid may not affect growth

tax evasion in new disguise examining tax havens international bank deposits abstract recent efforts to reduce international tax evasion focus on information exchange with tax havens using bilateral bank data for 1397 countrypairs in a balanced quarterly panel from 2003 i to 2017 iv we first show that information on request treaties with tax havens reduce bank deposits in tax havens by 27 5 second also deposits from tax havens in high tax countries decline after such treaties are signed giving authorities a second angle to detect tax evasion both reactions dissipate overt time and treaties signed after 2010 trigger no further reactions these results cannot be explained by deposit shifting alone and we find no evidence of transitioning into legality third recent policy initiatives based on the automatic exchange of bank information lead to very similar initial reactions as earlier treaties consistent with adjustments on the part of tax evaders this suggests that tax evaders adapt to established information exchange treaties by using new disguises to hide their true income and react again to new measures these results cast doubt on the effectiveness of current forms of information exchange to tackle international tax evasion

top incomes in the long run of history a recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid hence aggregate economic growth per capita and gini inequality indexes are sensitive to excluding or including top incomes we discuss the estimation methods and issues that arise when constructing top income share series including income definition and comparability over time and across countries tax avoidance and tax evasion we provide a summary of the key empirical findings most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the twentieth century in general due to shocks to top capital incomes during the wars and depression shocks top income shares do not recover in the immediate postwar decades however over the last thirty years top income shares have increased substantially in english speaking countries and in india and china but not in continental european countries or japan this increase is due in part to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes as a result wage income comprises a larger fraction of top incomes than in the past finally we discuss the theoretical and empirical models that have been proposed to account for the facts and the main questions that remain open

financial intermediation international risk sharing and reserve currencies abstract i model the equilibrium risk sharing between countries with varying financial development the most financially developed country takes greater risks because its financial intermediaries deal with funding problems better in good times the more financially developed country consumes more and runs a trade deficit financed by the higher financial income that it earns as compensation for taking greater risk during global crises it suffers heavier losses its currency emerges as the reserve currency because it appreciates during crises thus providing a good hedge i provide evidence that financial net worth plays a crucial role in understanding this asymmetric risk sharing jel e44 f14 f32 g01 g15 g21

tax evasion and swiss bank deposits bank deposits in jurisdictions with banking secrecy constitute an eective tool to evade taxes on interest income a recent eu reform reduces the scope for this type of tax evasion by introducing a source tax on interest income earned by eu residents in switzerland and several other jurisdictions with banking secrecy in this paper we estimate the impact of the source tax on swiss bank deposits held by eu residents while using that non eu residents were not subject to the tax to apply a natural experiment methodology we nd that the 15 source tax caused swiss bank deposits of eu residents to drop by more than 40 with most of the response occurring in two quarters immediately before and after the source tax was introduced the estimates imply an elasticity of swiss deposits with respect to the net of source tax rate in the range 2 5 3

tax evasion capital gains taxes and the housing market abstract in this study we exploit a policy shock that differentially increased capital gains taxes for housing units with holding period less than 5 years and document tax avoidance and tax evasion in the residential resale market in china we show suggestive evidence that after the capital gains tax increase resale transactions exhibit more bunching above 5 years of holding period but the responses are small and imprecisely estimated more importantly using precise information of both the actual transaction price and the reported price to the tax authority we find that tax evasion measured by the difference between the two prices becomes 23 3 higher we also document that the policy has strong heterogeneous effects whereby cash buyers are 8 4 more likely to buy a house than buyers who need financing after the policy this is mainly because financing buyers prefer a higher reported price and so less tax evasion to secure higher bank loans but cash buyers do not have such concern

flight capital as a portfolio choice the authors examine flight capital in the context of portfolio choice they estimate the stock of flight capital held abroad and compare it with the stock of real nonfinancial capital held within each country for 51 countries they construct estimates as of 1990 of private domestic capital and flight capital which combined add up to domestic wealth there are large regional differences in the proportion of private wealth that is held abroad ranging from 3 percent in south asia to 39 percent in africa they explain differences in portfolio choice in terms of the capital to labor ratio indebtedness exchange rate distortions and risk ratings all proxies for differences in the risk adjusted rate of return on capital they then apply the results to four policy questions in which private portfolio choices are potentially important the effect of the east asian crisis on domestic capital outflows spillovers the effect of hipc debt relief on capital repatriation and why africa has so much of its private wealth outside the continent their conclusions 1 the four most severely affected east asian countries will eventually lose about 250 billion in domestic wealth as a result of the deterioration in risk between march 1997 and september 1998 2 they found some support for a spillover model 3 the effect of the hipc debt relief initiative on capital repatriation will vary massively between hipc eligible countries 4 africa has by far the lowest capital per worker which makes massive capital flight from africa all the more distinctive three variables explain capital flight in africa exchange rate overvaluation adverse investor risk ratings and high indebtedness

volatile top income shares in switzerland reassessing the evolution between 1981 and 2010 in the past twenty years the share of top incomes in switzerland has risen while exhibiting large variations switzerland is similar to european countries for the top 1 but closer to the united states for higher top income groups with the synthetic control method we close a time gap in the tax data exploiting the fact that swiss cantons changed their tax system at different points in time using social security data which cover all top labor incomes we document the growing importance of labor compared to capital incomes among top income earners in switzerland

how should capital be taxed this survey discusses how capital should be taxed in advanced economies we review the theoretical optimal tax literature survey empirical studies on the distribution of capital and the distortion

european banks and tax havens evidence from country by country reporting banks in the european union have recently started publicly reporting data on profit employee numbers turnover and tax on a country by country basis this new data source is capable of indicating

financial consumption and the cost of finance measuring financial efficiency in europe 1950 2007 this paper proposes to assess financial intermediation efficiency in germany france the uk and europe more broadly over the past 60 years i rely on philippon s 2012 methodology which calculates the unit cost of financial intermediation through the ratio of financial consumption measured by financial income to financial output approximated by the sum of outstanding assets intermediated the contribution of this paper is threefold first because financial industry va ignores banks capital income capital gains dividends and interest on securities it is an imperfect measure of the consumption of financial intermediation so long as capital income generates wages and profits to financial intermediaries it is akin to an implicit consumption of financial services using banking income instead of banking va to measure the consumption of banking services i show that the gdp share of finance has increased continuously in germany france the uk and europe as a whole second the unit cost of financial intermediation increased over the past 40 years except in france where overall it stagnated in addition the european unit cost matches the us unit cost calculated by philippon 2012 finally because financial intermediaries deal with nominal stocks and ows and because the unit cost increases during periods of monetary troubles i focus here on nominal rates of interest to explain the evolution of unit cost i show that a rise in nominal rates of interest increases the spread of bank interest so that 1970s and 1980s high unit costs are statistically explained by increases in short term interest rates on the other hand post 1990s high unit cost seems to coincide with the development of new market based activities

risk and the distribution of human capital abstract we developed a model in which aggregate production risk determines the average level of education and its distribution greater risk is associated with greater educational inequality and a lower average attainment an empirical test using panel data supports this conclusion

wealth inequality in the united states since 1913 evidence from capitalized income tax data this paper combines income tax returns with flow of funds data to estimate the distribution of household wealth in the united states since 1913 we estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income we successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth the survey of consumer finance linked estate and income tax returns and foundations tax records wealth concentration has followed a u shaped evolution over the last 100 years it was high in the beginning of the twentieth century fell from 1929 to 1978 and has continuously increased since then the rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0 1 wealth share from 7 in 1979 to 22 in 2012 a level almost as high as in 1929 the bottom 90 wealth share rst increased up to the mid 1980s and then steadily declined the increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality top wealth holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of total labor income in the economy we explain how our ndings can be reconciled with survey of consumer finances and estate tax data

coordination and the fight against tax havens abstract the success or failure of the fight against tax havens is the outcome of a many player coordination game between a tax haven and its potential investors key determinants are the costly international pressure and the size of the haven country s revenue pool the latter is determined endogenously by the decisions of many individual investors our analysis suggests a non standard market model that explains why haven countries would ever comply with international standards of transparency despite the large empirically observable returns in the tax haven business it also alludes to why service fees in tax havens can be positive despite a competitive financial market with multiple tax havens furthermore we identify a trade off between the fight against tax havens and high tax rates finally low fines for disclosed offshore tax evasion e g in special programs for tax evaders who voluntarily report their offshore wealth strengthen haven countries against international pressure

top wealth shares in the uk over more than a century abstract recent research highlighted controversy about the evolution of concentration of personal wealth in this paper we provide new evidence about the long run evolution of top wealth shares for the united kingdom the new series covers a long period from 1895 to the present and has a different point of departure from the previous literature we start with the analysis of the distribution of estates left at death we find that the application to the estate data of mortality multipliers to yield estimates of wealth among the living does not substantially change the degree of concentration over much of the period both in the uk and us allowing inferences to be made for years when this method cannot be applied the results show that wealth concentration in the uk remained relatively constant during the first wave of globalization but then decreased dramatically in the period from 1914 to 1979 the uk went from being more unequal in terms of wealth than the us to being less unequal however the decline in uk wealth concentration came to an end around 1980 and since then there is evidence of an increase in top shares notably in the distribution of wealth excluding housing in recent years we investigate the triangulating evidence provided by data on capital income concentration and on reported super fortunes

it s the market the broad based rise in the return to top talent abstract one explanation that has been proposed for rising inequality is that technical change allows highly talented individuals or superstars to manage or perform on a larger scale applying their talent to greater pools of resources and reaching larger numbers of people thus becoming more productive and higher paid others argue that managerial power has increased in a way that allows those at the top to receive higher pay that social norms against higher pay levels have broken down or that tax policy affects the distribution of surpluses between employers and employees we offer evidence bearing on the different theories explaining the rise in inequality in the united states over recent decades first we look the increase in pay at the highest income levels across occupations we consider the income share of the top 1 percent over time and we turn to evidence on inequality of wealth at the top in looking at the wealthiest americans we find that those in the forbes 400 are less likely to have