The well-documented positive correlation between income risk and wealth was interpreted as evidence for high amounts of … precautionary wealth in various studies. However, the large estimates emerged from pooling non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs … private wealth balance sheets. Entrepreneurs, who face high income risk, hold more wealth than employees, but it is shown that …

stable across specifications. There is evidence for a share of precautionary wealth of about 14 to 17 percent. …

analyzed empirically using micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP). Wealth in 2002 is regressed on … also taken into account. When using net financial wealth, precautionary saving is statistically significant and … economically quite important. The share of precautionary net financial wealth in total aggregate net financial wealth is on average …

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this … in cross-sections, which eliminates transitory wealth inequality due to age, yet preserves inequality arising from other … yield erroneous wealth inequality rankings of countries. …

insights into the role of country-specific shocks in shaping long-run wealth dynamics. This paper presents the first … comprehensive study of wealth and its distribution in Germany since the 19th century. We combine tax and archival data, household … surveys, historical national accounts, and rich lists to analyze the evolution of the German wealth distribution over the long …

, this paper analyzes the effects of participation in Riester plans on wealth at different points of the distribution. We … substantial heterogeneity in the effect of Riester participation on wealth. While Riester participation increases total net wealth …