Artikel

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 under-represented 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 1% 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.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Journal: International Tax and Public Finance ; ISSN: 0927-5940 ; Volume: 26 ; Year: 2019 ; Issue: 6 ; Pages: 1234-1258 ; Berlin: Springer

Classification
Wirtschaft
Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
Specific Distributions; Specific Statistics
Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
Subject
Wealth distribution
Missing rich
Pareto distribution
HFCS

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Bach, Stefan
Thiemann, Andreas
Zucco, Aline
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Springer
(where)
Berlin
(when)
2019

DOI
doi:10.1007/s10797-019-09578-1
Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET

Data provider

This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.

Object type

  • Artikel

Associated

  • Bach, Stefan
  • Thiemann, Andreas
  • Zucco, Aline
  • Springer

Time of origin

  • 2019

Other Objects (12)