This paper studies the gap in wealth between male and female single households using 2010 Household Finance and Consumption Survey data for eight European countries. In the raw data, a large gap emerges at the upper end of the unconditional distribution. While OLS estimates show no difference in average net wealth levels, quantile regressions at the 95th percentile yield mixed evidence for the gender wealth gap in different specifications. Labour market characteristics and participation in asset and debt categories largely explain the differences between male and female single households. We show that the gender gap in net wealth is driven by gender gaps in gross wealth and its components, but is attenuated in four countries by gender gaps in (collateralized) debt. In the full specification, the unexplained gap in gross wealth amounts to 27% in Slovakia, 33% in France, 44% in Austria, 45% in Germany, and 48% in Greece. A robustness check using person-level pension wealth confirms the presence of a gender gap for the full population. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This paper studies the gap in wealth between male and female single households using 2010 Household Finance and Consumption Survey data for eight European countries. In the raw data, a large gap emerges at the upper end of the unconditional distribution. While OLS estimates show no difference in average net wealth levels, quantile regressions at the 95th percentile yield mixed evidence for the gender wealth gap in different specifications. Labour market characteristics and participation in asset and debt categories largely explain the differences between male and female single households. The gender gap in net wealth is driven by gaps in gross wealth and its components, but is attenuated in four countries by gender gaps in (collateralized) debt. In the full specification, the unexplained gap in gross wealth amounts to 27 percent in Slovakia, 33 percent in France, 44 percent in Austria, 45 percent in Germany, and 48 percent in Greece.

The paper investigates how including the distribution of wealth changes the demand effects of redistributing functional income. It develops a model with an endogenous wealth distribution and shows that the endogenous rise in wealth inequality resulting from a redistribution towards profits weakens the growth effects of this redistribution. Consequently, a wage-led regime becomes more strongly wage-led. A profit-led regime on the other hand becomes less profit-led and there may even be a regime switch - in this case the short-run profit-led economy becomes wage-led in the long run due to the endogenous effects of wealth inequality. The paper thereby provides a possible explanation for the instability of demand regimes over time. / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

This paper studies the gender wealth gap using 2010 Household Finance and Consumption Survey data for 15 European countries, and finds that households with only one male adult have more net wealth than households with one female adult, and that households with an adult couple have the highest net wealth. Using OLS regressions to predict net wealth and the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation of net wealth, as well as the nonparametric DiNardo-Fortin-Lemieux re-weighting technique, to study the relationship between household and personal characteristics with net wealth, the paper finds that differences in labor market characteristics between male and female households, most notably lifetime labor force participation and wages, explain much of the gender wealth gap.(authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

« Cette thèse porte donc sur les conditions de production et de réception de l'ensemble des téléromans diffusés par le réseau français de Radio-Canada, de 1952 à 1977. Entre La famille Plouffe et Du tac au tac il y a, certes, une révolution technique dans le monde de la télévision, une révolution tranquille dans la société québécoise et une évolution extrêmement rapide du rôle qu'a joué la télévision dans cette société. Ces mutations, plus ou moins liées, ont directement affecté nos téléromans en participant aux changements qui s'y sont opérés. Car, il ne faut pas s'y tromper: si le discours actuel, venant des intellectuels surtout, tend à propager qu'"on voit une émission, on les a vues toutes", une observation diachronique de ces vingt-cinq premières années prouverait plutôt que la réception et, dans une moindre mesure, la production de téléromans ont subi d'importantes transformations. Nous souhaitons, dans ce travail, rendre compte de cette évolution. L'expérience acquise par tous, auteurs et comédiens, réalisateurs et techniciens, la connaissance du média et de ses contraintes, les caprices de la censure, l'affinement des techniques et l'assouplissement des conditions de travail sont autant d'éléments qui furent prépondérants dans la fabrication du téléroman et qui modifièrent peut-être l'accueil que devaient faire les intellectuels à ces oeuvres. Le pivot central de cette thèse est donc la mise en parallèle de la production des téléromans, d'une part, et les réactions qu'ils ont suscitées, tant auprès du public que des critiques, d'autre part. Nous aurons constamment en tête le souci d'éclairer le cheminement de cet éloignement entre instances critiques et émissions populaires. La question que nous jugeons fondamentale et à laquelle nous voulons trouver une réponse est la suivante: comment et pourquoi, en vingt-cinq ans, la critique, qui est le principal témoin de la vitalité culturelle d'une société, passe-t-elle, pour le même type de programme, d'un jugement plutôt favorable à un discours essentiellement péjoratif? A partir de cette question, une multitude d'aspects seront abordés dans cette recherche, tous liés à l'histoire des téléromans et à l'histoire de la critique de télévision au Québec, avec, en filigrane, l'histoire des vingt-cinq premières années de Radio-Canada. Et, sous-jacente à cette question se posera toute celle de la culture savante et de la culture populaire. Malgré les difficultés que posent ces deux concepts et bien que les définitions qui en sont faites soient aussi variées que complexes, nous les utiliserons, au cours de cette recherche, dans leur sens le plus classique: culture savante et culture populaire seront entendues comme dichotomiques, la première pouvant être comprise comme étant une forme raffinée de la seconde ou, à l'inverse, la seconde, une forme détériorée de la première. Les rapports entre l'une et l'autre, le jeu d'opposition qui, toujours, les a définies, ressortiront inévitablement de notre analyse des téléromans et des critiques qui leur furent faites. »--Pages 3-4

We discuss the effects of rising shareholder power on distribution and capital accumulation in a Kaleckian model. Increasing shareholder power is associated with decreasing managements' animal spirits, on the one hand, and increasing dividends distributed to shareholders, on the other hand. In the short run, increasing shareholder power may either have positive ('finance-led'), negative ('normal') or intermediate ('profits without investment') effects on capacity utilisation, profits and capital accumulation. In the medium run, the positive ('finance-led') effects may be maintained in a stable environment under very special conditions, whereas the negative ('normal') and the intermediate ('profits without investment') effects turn into cumulative disequilibrium processes with falling rates of capacity utilisation, profits and capital accumulation and rising debt- and rentiers' equity-capital-ratios. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

We introduce the tractable buffer stock savings setup of Carroll (2009 NBER Working Paper) into an otherwise conventional New-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with financial frictions. The introduction of a precautionary saving motive arising from an uninsurable risk of permanent income loss, affects the model's properties in a number of interesting ways: it produces a more hump-shaped reaction of consumption in response to both supply (technology) and demand (monetary) shocks, and more pronounced reactions in response to demand shocks. Adoption of the buffer stock savings setup thus offers a more microfounded way, compared to, e.g., habit preferences in consumption, to introduce Keynesian features into the model, serving as a device to curbing excessive consumption smoothing, and to attributing a higher role to demand driven fluctuations. We also discuss steady state effects, determinacy properties as well as other practical issues. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Piketty's main theoretical prediction is that a small elite will own all wealth if capitalism is left to its own devices. We formulate and calibrate a Post-Keynesian model with an endogenous distribution of wealth between workers and capitalists. The model permits Piketty's Corner solution of all wealth held by capitalists; however, it also shows that interior solutions with a stable, non-zero wealth share of workers, a stable wealth-to-income ratio, and a stable and positive gap between the profit and the growth rate determined by the Cambridge equation. Furthermore, simulations show that the model confirms to Piketty's empirical findings in a transitional phase, in which the wealth share of capitalists rises to over 60%, the wealth-toincome ratio increases, and income inequality rises. Finally, we show that the introduction of a wealth tax as suggested by Piketty could neutralize the rise in wealth concentration. / Series: INEQ Working Paper Series

Im vorliegenden Artikel werden die zentralen Ergebnisse der Studie zur Vermögensverteilung zwischen Frauen und Männern auf Personenebene in Österreich vorgestellt. Es wurden bereits zahlreiche Studien zu den Themen der Einkommensverteilung und dem geschlechtsspezifischen Lohnunterschied publiziert, die Analyse von Vermögensunterschieden zwischen Geschlechtern stand bisher allerdings nicht im Zentrum der Betrachtung. Dabei ist gerade Vermögen ein wesentlich umfassenderes Maß für den Wohlstand eines Haushalts bzw. Individuums. Die Untersuchung der geschlechtsspezifischen Vermögenslücke erfolgt im Rahmen der Studie zum ersten Mal für Österreich anhand von Individualdaten aus dem "Household Finance and Consumption Survey" (HFCS) 2014. Die Analyseergebnisse zeigen, dass das Nettovermögen innerhalb von Paarhaushalten ungleich verteilt ist und eine geschlechtsspezifische Vermögensdifferenz zulasten der Frauen existiert. In österreichischen Paarhaushalten kann im Durchschnitt ein Gender Wealth Gap in Höhe von 58.417 A ermittelt werden. Frauen in Paarhaushalten besitzen demnach um 28% weniger Vermögen als Männer. Dieser Artikel analysiert des Weiteren Unterschiede hinsichtlich Nettovermögen von Frauen und Männern in Paar- und Single-Haushalten anhand von Haushaltsstruktur und Entscheidungsmacht.

This article contributes to the field of evolutionary macroeconomics by highlighting the dynamic interlinkages between micro-meso-macro with a Veblenian meso foundation in an agent-based macroeconomic model. Consumption is dependent on endogenously changing social class and signaling, such as bandwagon, Veblen and snob effects. In particular, we test the macroeconomic effects of this meso foundation in a generic agent-based model of a closed artificial economy. The model is stock-flow consistent and builds upon local decision heuristics of heterogeneous agents characterized by bounded rationality and satisficing behavior. These agents include a multitude of households (workers and capitalists), firms, banks as well as a capital goods firm, a government and a central bank. Simulation experiments indicate coevolutionary dynamics between signaling-by-consuming and firm specialization that eventually effect employment and consumer prices, as well as other macroeconomic aggregates.