IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/psewpa/halshs-00590723.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Individual preferences and the distribution of wealth

Author

Listed:
  • Luc Arrondel

    (PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • André Masson

    (PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

For a sub-sample of French households of an Insee wealth survey, we obtain new and relative measures of 5 individual preference parameters : the risk "attitude" (aversion, prudence...), the rate of time depreciation over the life-cycle, the degree of short-term impatience, and the degrees of family and non family altruism. Short-term impatience and non family altruism are found no to affect wealth but, contrarily to recent results of behavioural analysis, the three other parameters have significant effects on wealth (financial, gross or net), which are consistent with theoretical predictions : wealth accumulation increases with the degree of prudence (precautionary saving), falls with time preference (life-cycle saving) and rises with the degree of family altruism (wealth intended for bequests). The way preferences are measured allows to get rid of potential causality problems and the joint explanatory power of the three parameters appears sizeable, although less important than the one of classic explanatory variables (age, income, social class and inheritance).

Suggested Citation

  • Luc Arrondel & André Masson, 2005. "Individual preferences and the distribution of wealth," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590723, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-00590723
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00590723
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00590723/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-00590723. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.