James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality

Clementine Van Effenterre
Stone Visiting Faculty

May 2022

Moshe Buchinksy
Professor of Economics, Sciences

April 2022

Abstract: In this paper we explore a quasi-experiment that took place in China, in a typical poor rural county in China, Xin County in Henan Province. In this county they assigned county officials (outsiders) to poor villages in order to act as the village supervisors. This newly introduced institutional reform improved formal insurance and the local governance quality in the treated villages. We estimate the impact of this reform on the households’ migration choices and outcomes, most importantly income. We use the fact that the location of the village borders are exogenous and were determined many years ago to argue that the location of any households close to a border is random with respect to which side of the border it is located on, namely it is randomly assigned to the treatment. This random location determine whether or not a household is in a treated village. Combining this random assignment detailed administrative household-level data geo-referenced to the exact locations around the village borders allow us to identify causal effects of the institutional reform on important outcomes, using spatial regression discontinuity design. We find that: (a) the introduction of village supervisors can improve the efficiency and fairness of the formal insurance by diminishing within village favoritism; (b) the improvements in formal insurance decreases the spatial misallocation of labor by substantially increasing the out-migration of individuals from the the ultrapoor households to urban areas by about 19 percentage points for young males, and to a lesser degree for young females; (c) the out-migration helped the average poor household to increase the household income by more than 1700 CNY (or 36% of the annual minimum living standard) in only two years after the enactment of the reform; and (d) these forces served as the main drivers for the significant poverty alleviation in rural China from 2016 to 2020.

Jae Cho
Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich

March 2022

Simon Margolin
PhD Candidate at Princeton University, Department of Economics and Research Assistant at College de France

December 2021

Abstract: Is the corporate income tax a good instrument to curb income inequality? The answer to this question is not limited to the different incidence of this tax on capital and labor income. A closer look at the share of corporate tax burden that falls on labor reveals that it is unevenly distributed among workers. This paper argues that firm heterogeneity shapes this unequal distribution and, therefore, the consequences of corporate taxation on wage inequality and aggregate labor income. I develop a model featuring firm heterogeneity and imperfect competition in labor markets. The baseline parameterization generates a negative impact of corporate taxes on wage inequality. This result suggests that the progressivity of corporate taxation is accentuated by its heterogeneous effect on wages.

Axelle Ferriere
Assistant Professor, PSE

November 2021

Abstract: We study the optimal joint design of targeted transfers and progressive income taxes. We develop a simple analytical model and demonstrate an optimally negative relation between transfers and income-tax progressivity, due to both efficiency and redistribution concerns. That is, higher transfers should be financed with lower income-tax progressivity. We next quantify the optimal fiscal plan in a rich dynamic model calibrated to the U.S. economy. Transfers should be generous and financed with moderate income-tax progressivity. To redistribute while preserving efficiency, tax-and-transfer rates should be more progressive on average than on marginal rates. Transfers, even if lump-sum, precisely allow to disentangle average from marginal rates. Targeted transfers further implement non-monotonic marginal rates, but generate only modest additional gains relative to a lump-sum transfer. Quantitatively, the left tail of the income distribution determines the optimal size of the transfer, while the right tail drives the optimal income-tax progressivity.

Camille Landais
London School of Economics

June 2021

Abstract: Despite looming large in the public debate on the desirability of progressive wealth taxes, remarkably little is known on the migration responses to such taxes. Using unique administrative data on wealth and mobility, as well as variation stemming from large tax reforms in Sweden and Denmark, we offer the first detailed account of the impact of such taxes on migration patterns of the very wealthy. We start by documenting that the yearly net outmigration rate was positive, but small (around 0.1%) when wealth taxes were in place in Scandinavia. We further investigate selection into outmigration, and show that, contrary to what is found in the population at large, there is no education nor cognitive and non cognitive skill gradient in migration among the very wealthy. Using a diff-in-diff design around large tax reforms like the abolition of wealth taxes in Sweden or Denmark, we find a strong significant response of migration flows to the net of tax rate. We also provide evidence of anticipatory effects by young individuals not liable to the wealth tax but likely to become liable in the near future. Despite large responses in migration flows, we find that the overall effect of wealth taxes on the stock of wealthy individuals is small, as the baseline migration flows are very tiny. Our most conservative upper-bound estimate, accounting for anticipatory effect, suggests that a 1 percentage point increase in the effective average tax rate on wealth reduces the population of wealthy Scandinavians by 5%.

Stijn van Nieuwerburgh
Professor of Finance, Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate

June 2021

Abstract: Financial wealth inequality and long-term real interest rates track each other closely over the post-war period. Faced with unanticipated lower real rates, households which rely more on financial wealth must see large capital gains to afford the consumption that they planned before the decline in rates. Lower rates beget higher financial wealth inequality. Inequality in total wealth, the sum of financial and human wealth and the relevant concept for household welfare, rises much less than financial wealth inequality and even declines at the top of the wealth distribution. A standard incomplete markets model reproduces the observed increase in financial wealth inequality in response to a decline in real interest rates because high financial-wealth households have a financial portfolio with high duration.

Bertrand Badre
Inspector of Finances, HEC, Sciences Po 

January 2021