Research on wealth inequality usually focuses on real and financial assets, while pension wealth - the present value of future pension entitlements from public and company pension schemes - receives little attention. This is astonishing, given that pension plans play an important role for...

Starting from the premise that productivity is heterogeneous across firms, Melitz (2003) explains why individual productivity is key in determining the capability of a firm to export. In this paper we build a model along Melitz’s lines to show that also financial capacity, captured by the...

We provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years of population data from Norway's administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results. First, individuals earn markedly different average returns on their net worth (a standard...

We examine the composition of augmented household wealth (i.e., the sum of net worth and pension wealth) in the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth, of about 48 percent in the United States and 61 percent in Germany. When pension wealth...

This contribution analyses early retirement in Germany and Switzerland with a focus on financial resources. Using data from CH-SILC linked to administrative records and the German SOEP, we distinguish three different financial resources: namely, pre-retirement labour income, net worth and...

Im Rahmen einer nicht repräsentativen Sondererhebung wurde die Lebenssituation hochvermögender Haushalte mit mindestens einer Million Euro Geldvermögen erhoben und der Situation durchschnittlicher Haushalte aus repräsentativen Stichproben gegenübergestellt. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin,...

We use new population-wide register data on inheritances and wealth in Sweden to estimate the causal impact of inheritances on wealth inequality. We find that inheritances reduce relative wealth inequality (e.g., the Gini coefficient falls by 5–10 percent) but that absolute dispersion...