This paper uncovers ongoing trends in idiosyncratic earnings volatility across generations by decomposing residual earnings auto-covariances into a permanent and a transitory component. We employ data on complete earnings life cycles for prime age men born 1935 through 1974 that covers earnings...

This paper points to flaws in Gini decompositions by income sources and population subgroups and to common pitfalls in the interpretation of decomposition results, focusing on methods within the framework of Rao (1969). We argue that within this framework Gini elasticities may provide the only...

Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient we measure the contribution to inequality of direct monetary income flows to and from the Brazilian State. The income flows from the State include public servants' earnings, Social Security pensions, unemployment benefits and Social Assistance...

This article uses recently released data from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua (PNAD Contínua), Brazilian household survey to calculate changes in inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient from 2016 to 2017. A Shorrocks decomposition by factor components is also...

We show that measures of inequality of opportunity (IOP) fully consistent with Roemer (1998)'s IOP theory can be straightforwardly estimated by adopting a machine learning approach, and apply our novel method to analyse the development of IOP in Germany during the last three decades. Hereby, we...

In this paper, we analyse different measures of asset and income poverty using micro-data for 15 euro area countries from the 2010 Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). We are particularly interested in the way in which specific definitions of income and wealth poverty affect the...

Empirical evidence on distributional preferences shows that people do not judge inequality as problematic per se but that they take the underlying sources of income differences into account. In contrast to this evidence, current measures of inequality do not adequately reflect these normative...

We revisit the alleged retirement consumption puzzle. According to the life-cycle theory, foreseeable income reductions such as those around retirement should not affect consumption. However, we first recall that given higher leisure endowments after retirement, the theory does predict a fall of...

We study the relationship between overconfidence and the political and financial behavior of a nationally representative sample. To do so, we introduce a new method of eliciting overconfidence that is simple to understand, quick to implement, and captures respondents' excess confidence in their...