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On Top of the Top – Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists

On Top of the Top – Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists published on

Disslbacher Franziska, Ertl Michael, List Emanuel, Mokre Patrick and Schnetzer Matthias (2021): On Top of the Top – Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists. INEQ Working Paper Series, 20. WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna.

Abstract
Poor coverage of the top in wealth surveys conceals the extent of wealth inequality. The literature mitigates this shortcoming by enriching survey data with rich lists and estimating the top tail with a Pareto distribution. However, recent studies rely on ad-hoc assumptions for some of the required parameters. We suggest a unified regression approach to estimate all parameters of a Pareto distribution jointly and extend our analysis with a more flexible three-parameter Generalized Pareto estimation. We introduce a new database of national rich lists (ERLDB) as an alternative to commonly used global rich lists to combine with survey data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS 2017). Our findings for 14 European countries show that wealth is more concentrated than surveys suggest, with almost doubling Top 1% shares in the most extreme cases. In contrast, countries with successful oversampling strategies tend to experience only minor changes in inequality metrics.

The Quantile Impacts of Real Competition on Industrial Wage Inequality in the United States, 1998-2018

The Quantile Impacts of Real Competition on Industrial Wage Inequality in the United States, 1998-2018 published on

Mokre Patrick (2021): The Quantile Impacts of Real Competition on Industrial Wage Inequality in the United States, 1998-2018. Accepted the Ninth ECINEQ Meeting, July 8-10 2021, ECINEQ The Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

Abstract
Competition between firms has a substantial impact on wage inequality between workers. The classical political economics literature proposes that turbulent dynamics of real competition within and between industries provide the framework for wage bargaining between workers and firms. Practial limits to wage growth are given turbulently equalizing (incremental profit rates and within-industry cost differentials) and persistently different factors (capital intensity and share of labor cost in total cost). The former provide the link between competition and wage growth, while the latter are responsible for persistent industrial wage premiums. We combine employee level data from the CPS and industry level data from BEA industry accounts from 1998-2018 and find that these impacts are substantial and of unambiguous signs but differential magnitude between income quantiles in those industries where both incremental profit rates and wage growth participate in turbulent equalization.

Price-Value Deviations and the Labor Theory of Value. Evidence from 42 Countries, 2000-2017

Price-Value Deviations and the Labor Theory of Value. Evidence from 42 Countries, 2000-2017 published on

Işıkara Güney and Mokre Patrick (2021): Price-Value Deviations and the Labor Theory of Value. Evidence from 42 Countries, 2000-2017. Review of Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2021.1904648.

Abstract
The relationship between prices and labour values has been the source of fruitful controversy since the earliest Classical Political Economists. The alleged refutation of the labour theory of value was an integral part of the marginalist attack against Classical and Marxist analysis. However, statistical analysis of price-value relationships made possible by the data available since the later 20th century suggest considerable empirical strength of the labour theory of value.

We trace the intellectual history of the price-value relationship and its inseparable link to capitalist competition through Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa. Following Shaikh and Ochoa, we present an empirical model of testing their hypotheses that (1) labour values regulate prices of production and (2) serve as gravitational centers for market prices. The analysis of a large dataset of 42 countries and 15 years reveal only small and stable deviations and thus lend support to the Classical Political Economic analysis. With a sample of over 36,000 price vectors, we provide the most comprehensive empirical application of its class and generalize the results that have been established in the relevant literature.

Keywords: price, value, input-output, classical political economics, labour theory of value

JEL Classification: B12, B51, C67, O57, P16 

Erwerbslosigkeit in Österreich 2020 – die Branche macht den Unterschied (German)

Erwerbslosigkeit in Österreich 2020 – die Branche macht den Unterschied (German) published on

Published in German on awblog.at.

Die Corona-Krise hat den Arbeitsalltag fast aller Menschen in Österreich komplett auf den Kopf gestellt. Das gilt besonders für die Hunderttausenden, die ihren Job verloren haben. Von Februar auf März stiegen die Arbeitslosenzahlen um 225.000, und noch im August waren 92.000 mehr Menschen arbeitslos als im Vorjahr. Wie bei allen Krisen lohnt es sich, etwas genauer hinzuschauen: Besonders viele Jobs gingen zunächst in der Bau- und Tourismusbranche verloren.

HFCS: Licht im Dunkeln der Vermögensverteilung (German)

HFCS: Licht im Dunkeln der Vermögensverteilung (German) published on

Published in German on MAKRONOM Blog (Paywall).

Die Verteilungsfrage wird durch die Corona-Pandemie noch einmal an Bedeutung gewinnen. Da kommt es sehr gelegen, dass kürzlich die umfassendste statistische Grundlage zur Untersuchung der Vermögensverteilung in Europa aktualisiert wurde. Ein Beitrag von Franziska Disslbacher und Patrick Mokre.

Econometrics beyond OLS (Winter 2020/21)

Econometrics beyond OLS (Winter 2020/21) published on

Selected slides from my course at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Institute for Socio-Economics (IFSO) in Winter 2020/21.

Lab 1: Ordinary Least Squares
Lab 2: Time Series
Lab 3: Static Panels
Lab 4: Dynamic Panels
Lab 5: Conditional Quantile Regression
Lab 6: Unconditional Quantile Regression/RIF
Lab 7: Estimating Inequality (Semiparametric Distributional Analysis)

Advanced Econometrics (Fall 2020)

Advanced Econometrics (Fall 2020) published on

Selected slides from the lab session for Professor Koohi-Kamali‘s PhD level course on panel data econometrics.

Lab 1: Regression Analysis
Lab 2: Discrete Choice
Lab 3: Panel Data
Lab 4: Panel Endogeneity
Lab 5: Dynamic Panels 1
Lab 6: Stationarity
Lab 7: Dynamic Panels 2
Lab 8: ARMA
Lab 9: VAR and ARDL
Lab 10: Panel Cointegration
Lab 11: Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR)

On Top of the Top – Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists

On Top of the Top – Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists published on

Franziska Disslbacher, Michael Ertl, Emanuel List, Patrick Mokre & Matthias Schnetzer, 2021. “On Top of the Top – Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists“, INEQ Working Paper Series, 20. WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna.

Abstract

Poor coverage of the top in wealth surveys conceals the extent of wealth inequality. The literature mitigates this shortcoming by enriching survey data with rich lists and estimating the top tail with a Pareto distribution. However, recent studies rely on ad-hoc assumptions for some of the required parameters. We suggest a unified regression approach to estimate all parameters of a Pareto distribution jointly and extend our analysis with a more flexible three-parameter Generalized Pareto estimation. We introduce a new database of national rich lists (ERLDB) as an alternative to commonly used global rich lists to combine with survey data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS 2017). Our findings for 14 European countries show that wealth is more concentrated than surveys suggest, with almost doubling Top 1% shares in the most extreme cases. In contrast, countries with successful oversampling strategies tend to experience only minor changes in inequality metrics.

Advanced Econometrics (Lab, Fall 2019)

Advanced Econometrics (Lab, Fall 2019) published on

Selected slides from the lab session for Professor Koohi-Kamali‘s PhD level course on panel data econometrics.

Lab 1: Regression Analysis (Recapitulation)
Lab 2: Discrete Choice
Lab 3: Instrumental Variables
Lab 4: Auto-Regressive Distributed Lags Analysis (ARDL)
Lab 5: Stationarity
Lab 6: Auto-Regressive Moving Average Analysis (ARMA)
Lab 7: Vector Auto-Regressive Analysis (VAR)
Lab 8: Panel Co-Integration
Lab 9: Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR)
Lab 10: Pesaran-Shin-Smith Bounds Test Example

Advanced Political Economics 2: Classical Microeconomics. (Lab Section, Fall 2019)

Advanced Political Economics 2: Classical Microeconomics. (Lab Section, Fall 2019) published on

Selected slide sets from the lab section for Professor Anwar Shaikh‘s class on classical microeconomics.

Lab 7: Marx’ Transformation Problem

Lab 8: Panico on Marx on the Profit Rate-Interest Rate Relationship

Lab 11: Botwinick on Classical Political Economics and Income Inequality

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