IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1105.2122.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Money Trickles Up - Wealth & Income Distributions

Author

Listed:
  • Geoff Willis

Abstract

This paper combines ideas from classical economics and modern finance with the general Lotka-Volterra models of Levy & Solomon to provide straightforward explanations of wealth and income distributions. Using a simple and realistic economic formulation, the distributions of both wealth and income are fully explained. Both the power tail and the log-normal like body are fully captured. It is of note that the full distribution, including the power law tail, is created via the use of absolutely identical agents. It is further demonstrated that a simple scheme of compulsory saving could eliminate poverty at little cost to the taxpayer.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoff Willis, 2011. "Why Money Trickles Up - Wealth & Income Distributions," Papers 1105.2122, arXiv.org, revised May 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1105.2122
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.2122
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acharya, Viral V. & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2005. "Asset pricing with liquidity risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 375-410, August.
    2. Amihud, Yakov & Mendelson, Haim & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2006. "Liquidity and Asset Prices," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(4), pages 269-364, February.
    3. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    4. Biais, Bruno & Glosten, Larry & Spatt, Chester, 2005. "Market microstructure: A survey of microfoundations, empirical results, and policy implications," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 217-264, May.
    5. Lee,Frederic S., 2006. "Post Keynesian Price Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521030212, September.
    6. Madhavan, Ananth, 2000. "Market microstructure: A survey," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 205-258, August.
    7. Dial, Jay & Murphy, Kevin J., 1995. "Incentives, downsizing, and value creation at General Dynamics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 261-314, March.
    8. A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), 2000. "Handbook of Income Distribution," Handbook of Income Distribution, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    9. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 815-849, June.
    10. Peter Bernholz, 2003. "Monetary Regimes and Inflation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2873.
    11. Arnab Chatterjee & Sitabhra Sinha & Bikas K. Chakrabarti, 2007. "Economic Inequality: Is it Natural?," Papers physics/0703201, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2007.
    12. Reinhart, Karmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. ""This time is different": panorama of eight centuries of financial crises," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 77-114, March.
    13. Young, Andrew T., 2010. "One of the things we know that ain't so: Is US labor's share relatively stable?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 90-102, March.
    14. J. Doyne Farmer & Paolo Patelli & Ilija I. Zovko, 2003. "The Predictive Power of Zero Intelligence in Financial Markets," Papers cond-mat/0309233, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2004.
    15. Korajczyk, Robert A. & Sadka, Ronnie, 2008. "Pricing the commonality across alternative measures of liquidity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 45-72, January.
    16. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2000. "Commonality in liquidity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 3-28, April.
    17. Sitabhra Sinha, 2005. "The Rich Are Different!: Pareto Law from asymmetric interactions in asset exchange models," Papers physics/0504197, arXiv.org.
    18. Friedman, Milton, 2002. "Capitalism and Freedom," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226264202.
    19. Clementi, F. & Gallegati, M., 2005. "Power law tails in the Italian personal income distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 350(2), pages 427-438.
    20. Wright, Ian, 2009. "Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-27.
    21. Moshe Levy & Sorin Solomon, 1996. "Power Laws Are Logarithmic Boltzmann Laws," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(04), pages 595-601.
    22. Wright, Ian, 2005. "The social architecture of capitalism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 346(3), pages 589-620.
    23. Ben-Rephael, Azi & Kadan, Ohad & Wohl, Avi, 2008. "The diminishing liquidity premium," CFS Working Paper Series 2008/52, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    24. Stoll, Hans R., 2003. "Market microstructure," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 553-604, Elsevier.
    25. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(2), pages 215-268, November.
    26. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    27. Kurz,Heinz D. & Salvadori,Neri, 1997. "Theory of Production," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521588676, September.
    28. Harvie, David, 2000. "Testing Goodwin: Growth Cycles in Ten OECD Countries," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 24(3), pages 349-376, May.
    29. Jenkinson, T & Corbett, J, 1997. "How is Investment Financed? A Study of Germany, Japan, UK and US," Papers 16, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies-.
    30. Pettis, Michael, 2001. "The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195143300.
    31. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
    32. Matthieu Wyart & Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Julien Kockelkoren & Marc Potters & Michele Vettorazzo, 2006. "Relation between Bid-Ask Spread, Impact and Volatility in Double Auction Markets," Science & Finance (CFM) working paper archive 500067, Science & Finance, Capital Fund Management.
    33. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    34. Steve Keen, 1995. "Finance and Economic Breakdown: Modeling Minsky’s “Financial Instability Hypothesis”," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 607-635, July.
    35. A. Chatterjee & B. K. Chakrabarti, 2007. "Kinetic exchange models for income and wealth distributions," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 60(2), pages 135-149, November.
    36. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Marc Mezard, 2000. "Wealth condensation in a simple model of economy," Science & Finance (CFM) working paper archive 500026, Science & Finance, Capital Fund Management.
    37. Michael R. Pakko, 2004. "Labor's share," National Economic Trends, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Aug.
    38. Arnab Chatterjee & Bikas K. Chakrabarti, 2007. "Kinetic Exchange Models for Income and Wealth Distributions," Papers 0709.1543, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2007.
    39. Lee, Kuan-Hui, 2005. "The World Price of Liquidity Risk," Working Paper Series 2006-10, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    40. Angelo Ranaldo, 2006. "Intraday Market Dynamics Around Public Information Arrivals," Working Papers 2006-11, Swiss National Bank.
    41. Gaffeo, Edoardo & Gallegati, Mauro & Palestrini, Antonio, 2003. "On the size distribution of firms: additional evidence from the G7 countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 117-123.
    42. Karen E. Dynan & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2004. "Do the Rich Save More?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(2), pages 397-444, April.
    43. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    44. Finn E. Kydland & Edward C. Prescott, 1990. "Business cycles: real facts and a monetary myth," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 14(Spr), pages 3-18.
    45. Wataru Souma & Makoto Nirei, 2005. "Empirical study and model of personal income," Papers physics/0505173, arXiv.org.
    46. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1039-1082 is not listed on IDEAS
    47. Goyenko, Ruslan Y. & Holden, Craig W. & Trzcinka, Charles A., 2009. "Do liquidity measures measure liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 153-181, May.
    48. Burgstaller,Andre, 1994. "Property and Prices," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521419031, September.
    49. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    50. S. Baranzoni & P. Bianchi & L. Lambertini, 2000. "Multiproduct Firms, Product Differentiation, and Market Structure," Working Papers 368, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    51. Gallegati, Mauro & Keen, Steve & Lux, Thomas & Ormerod, Paul, 2006. "Worrying trends in econophysics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 370(1), pages 1-6.
    52. A. Drăgulescu & V.M. Yakovenko, 2001. "Evidence for the exponential distribution of income in the USA," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 20(4), pages 585-589, April.
    53. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2002. "Order imbalance, liquidity, and market returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 111-130, July.
    54. G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), 2003. "Handbook of the Economics of Finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1, March.
    55. Smith, Eric & Foley, Duncan K., 2008. "Classical thermodynamics and economic general equilibrium theory," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 7-65, January.
    56. L. Randall Wray, 1998. "Understanding Modern Money," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1668.
    57. Tarun Chordia & Asani Sarkar & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2003. "An empirical analysis of stock and bond market liquidity," Staff Reports 164, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    58. Friedman, Milton, 2002. "Capitalism and Freedom," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226264219, Febrero.
    59. Juan C. Ferrero, 2010. "The individual income distribution in Argentina in the period 2000-2009. A unique source of non stationary data," Papers 1006.2057, arXiv.org.
    60. G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), 2003. "Handbook of the Economics of Finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 2, March.
    61. Ripsy Bandourian & Robert Turley & James McDonald, 2002. "A Comparison of Parametric Models of Income Distribution across Countries and over Time," LIS Working papers 305, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    62. Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe & Mézard, Marc, 2000. "Wealth condensation in a simple model of economy," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 282(3), pages 536-545.
    63. Makoto Nirei & Wataru Souma, 2007. "A Two Factor Model Of Income Distribution Dynamics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(3), pages 440-459, September.
    64. Tarun Chordia, 2005. "An Empirical Analysis of Stock and Bond Market Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 85-129.
    65. Armand Joulin & Augustin Lefevre & Daniel Grunberg & Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, 2008. "Stock price jumps: news and volume play a minor role," Papers 0803.1769, arXiv.org.
    66. Wataru Souma, 2000. "Universal Structure of the Personal Income Distribution," Papers cond-mat/0011373, arXiv.org.
    67. Catherine Langlois, 1989. "Markup Pricing versus Marginalism: A Controversy Revisited," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 127-151, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Willis, Geoff, 2011. "Wealth, income, earnings and the statistical mechanics of flow systems," MPRA Paper 31139, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Geoff Willis, 2011. "Pricing, liquidity and the control of dynamic systems in finance and economics," Papers 1105.5503, arXiv.org.
    2. Victor M. Yakovenko & J. Barkley Rosser, 2009. "Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income," Papers 0905.1518, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2009.
    3. Dimitri Vayanos & Jiang Wang, 2012. "Market Liquidity -- Theory and Empirical Evidence," NBER Working Papers 18251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Söderberg, Jonas, 2008. "Do Macroeconomic Variables Forecast Changes in Liquidity? An Out-of-sample Study on the Order-driven Stock Markets in Scandinavia," CAFO Working Papers 2009:10, Linnaeus University, Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Business and Economics.
    5. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    6. Willis, Geoff, 2011. "Wealth, income, earnings and the statistical mechanics of flow systems," MPRA Paper 31139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Peter Christoffersen & Ruslan Goyenko & Kris Jacobs & Mehdi Karoui, 2018. "Illiquidity Premia in the Equity Options Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(3), pages 811-851.
    8. Willis, Geoff, 2011. "The Bowley Ratio," MPRA Paper 30852, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Nyborg, Kjell G. & Östberg, Per, 2014. "Money and liquidity in financial markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 30-52.
    10. Anirban Chakraborti & Ioane Muni Toke & Marco Patriarca & Frédéric Abergel, 2011. "Econophysics review: II. Agent-based models," Post-Print hal-00621059, HAL.
    11. Ramos, Henrique Pinto & Righi, Marcelo Brutti, 2020. "Liquidity, implied volatility and tail risk: A comparison of liquidity measures," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    12. Söderberg, Jonas, 2008. "Liquidity on the Scandinavian Order-driven Stock Exchanges," CAFO Working Papers 2009:11, Linnaeus University, Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Business and Economics.
    13. Díaz, Antonio & Escribano, Ana, 2020. "Measuring the multi-faceted dimension of liquidity in financial markets: A literature review," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    14. BEAUPAIN, Renaud & GIOT, Pierre & PETITJEAN, Mikael, 2006. "Market-wide liquidity co-movements, volatility regimes and market cap sizes," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2006102, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    15. Costas Efthimiou & Adam Wearne, 2016. "Household Income Distribution in the USA," Papers 1602.06234, arXiv.org.
    16. Venkatasubramanian, Venkat & Luo, Yu & Sethuraman, Jay, 2015. "How much inequality in income is fair? A microeconomic game theoretic perspective," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 435(C), pages 120-138.
    17. Lasse Pedersen, 2009. "When Everyone Runs for the Exit," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 5(4), pages 177-199, December.
    18. Billio, Monica & Getmansky, Mila & Lo, Andrew W. & Pelizzon, Loriana, 2012. "Econometric measures of connectedness and systemic risk in the finance and insurance sectors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(3), pages 535-559.
    19. Abankwa, Samuel & Blenman, Lloyd P., 2021. "Measuring liquidity risk effects on carry trades across currencies and regimes," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    20. Chordia, Tarun & Sarkar, Asani & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2005. "The Joint Dynamics of Liquidity, Returns, and Volatility Across Small and Large Firms," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt6z81z2wc, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:arx:papers:1105.2122. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.