Looking for the missing rich: Tracing the top tail of the wealth distribution
We analyse the top tail of the wealth distribution in France, Germany and Spain using the first and second waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Since top wealth is likely to be underrepresented in household surveys, we integrate big fortunes from rich lists, estimate a Pareto distribution, and impute the missing rich. In addition to the Forbes list, we rely on national rich lists since they represent a broader base of the big fortunes in those countries. As a result, the top one percent wealth share increases notably for the three selected countries after imputing the top wealth.We find that national rich lists can improve the estimation of the Pareto coefficient in particular when the list of national USD billionaires is short.
BACH Stefan;
THIEMANN Andreas;
ZUCCO Aline;
2019-11-18
SPRINGER
JRC118118
0927-5940 (online),
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10797-019-09578-1,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC118118,
10.1007/s10797-019-09578-1 (online),
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