Rich Pickings? Risk, Return, and Skill in Household Wealth

S-Tier
Journal: American Economic Review
Year: 2020
Volume: 110
Issue: 9
Pages: 2703-47

Authors (3)

Laurent Bach (ESSEC Business School) Laurent E. Calvet (not in RePEc) Paolo Sodini (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

2.681 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We investigate wealth returns on an administrative panel containing the disaggregated balance sheets of Swedish residents. The expected return on household net wealth is strongly persistent, determined primarily by systematic risk, and increasing in net worth, exceeding the risk-free rate by the size of the equity premium for households in the top 0.01 percent. Idiosyncratic risk is transitory but generates substantial long-term dispersion in returns in top brackets. Systematic and idiosyncratic risk both drive the cross-sectional distribution of the geometric average return over a generation. Furthermore, wealth returns explain most of the historical increase in top wealth shares.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aecrev:v:110:y:2020:i:9:p:2703-47
Journal Field
General
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-24