Is the Distribution of Income Compatible with a Stable Distribution?

Arbeitspapier

Mandelbrot (1961) proposed to apply the class of Pareto-Levy distributions - which belong to the Stable distributions - as a framework for modelling income distributions. He also presented theoretic arguments in favor of the Pareto-Levy distributions. In this paper we provide additional theoretical justification for this class of distributions. We also use micro data on individual market income to estimate the parameters of a Pareto-Levy distribution. Several estimation methods have been applied. The estimated Pareto-Levy distribution appears to fit the data well.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Discussion Papers ; No. 246

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Estimation: General ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
• Subject: Stable distributions ; Pareto-Levy distributions ; Income distributions

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dagsvik, John K. ; Vatne, Bjørn H.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Statistics Norway, Research Department
• (where): Oslo
• (when): 1999

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/192229
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET