Two hallmarks of U.S. monetary policy since the 1981-1982 recession have been declining interest rates and moderation in inflation. Coincident with these trends has been a surge in U.S. wealth inequality, with the Gini coefficient up by 0.070 between 1983 and 2019. This paper analyzes the...

Income volatility and wealth volatility are central objects of investigation for the literature on income and wealth inequality and dynamics. Here we analyse the two concepts in a comparative perspective for the same individuals in Italy and the U.S. over the last two decades. Contrary to our...

The paper analyzes the fiscal effects of a Swiss-type tax on household wealth, with a $120,000 exemption and marginal tax rates running from 0.05 to 0.3 percent on $2,400,000 or more of wealth. It also considers a wealth tax proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren with a $50,000,000 exemption, a...

Median household wealth shot up by 21.2 percent in real terms between 2016 and 2019, as asset prices continued to rebound. However, 2007 still remains the watershed year, and median wealth was down 20.4 percent relative to 2007, though mean wealth more than fully recovered. There was a modest...

Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2016. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted by 44 percent over years 2007 to 2010. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, went up sharply from 2007 to 2010, and...

We provide levels of, compositions of, and inequalities in household augmented wealth - defined as the sum of net worth and pension wealth - for two countries: the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth: about 48% in the United States and...

I use the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to analyze wealth trends from 1983 to 2013. Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2013. Median wealth plummeted by 44 percent over years 2007 to 2010 and wealth inequality was up sharply. These two movements can be...

Asset prices plunged between 2007 and 2010 but then rebounded from 2010 to 2013. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted by 44 percent over years 2007 to 2010, almost double the drop in housing prices. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was...

I speculate that technological spillover effects may have become more important over time as IT penetrated the U.S. economy. The rationale is that IT may speed up the process of knowledge transfer and make these knowledge spillovers more effective. Using US input-output tables for years 1958,...

Using the Survey of Consumer Finances, I find that the Black/white gap in standard net worth widened from 1989 to 2019 but narrowed between Hispanics and (non-Hispanic) whites. When the definition of wealth is expanded to incorporate Social Security and defined benefit pension wealth (both the...