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A Note on the Size Distribution of Consumption: More Double Pareto than Lognormal

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  • Toda, Alexis Akira

Abstract

The cross-sectional distribution of consumption is commonly approximated by the lognormal distribution. This note shows that consumption is better described by the double Pareto-lognormal distribution (dPlN), which has a lognormal body with two Pareto tails and arises as the stationary distribution in recently proposed dynamic general equilibrium models. dPlN outperforms other parametric distributions and is often not rejected by goodness-of-fit tests. The analytical tractability and parsimony of dPlN may be convenient for various economic applications.

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  • Toda, Alexis Akira, 2015. "A Note on the Size Distribution of Consumption: More Double Pareto than Lognormal," MPRA Paper 78979, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:78979
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    Cited by:

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    2. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran James Walsh, 2017. "Fat tails and spurious estimation of consumption‐based asset pricing models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1156-1177, September.
    3. Safari, Muhammad Aslam Mohd & Masseran, Nurulkamal & Ibrahim, Kamarulzaman & AL-Dhurafi, Nasr Ahmed, 2020. "The power-law distribution for the income of poor households," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 557(C).
    4. Beare, Brendan K & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2020. "On the emergence of a power law in the distribution of COVID-19 cases," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt9k5027d0, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    5. Schulz, Jan & Mayerhoffer, Daniel M., 2021. "A network approach to consumption," BERG Working Paper Series 173, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    6. Masato Okamoto, 2022. "Lorenz and Polarization Orderings of the Double-Pareto Lognormal Distribution and Other Size Distributions," Sankhya B: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Springer;Indian Statistical Institute, vol. 84(2), pages 548-574, November.
    7. Toda, Alexis Akira, 2019. "Wealth distribution with random discount factors," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 101-113.
    8. Toda, Alexis Akira, 2016. "Zipf's Law: A Microfoundation," MPRA Paper 78985, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Wang, Frank Xuyan, 2021. "Shape factor asymptotic analysis II," MPRA Paper 110827, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Brendan K. Beare & Alexis Akira Toda, 2022. "Determination of Pareto Exponents in Economic Models Driven by Markov Multiplicative Processes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1811-1833, July.
    11. Arturo Ramos & Till Massing & Atushi Ishikawa & Shouji Fujimoto & Takayuki Mizuno, 2023. "Composite distributions in the social sciences: A comparative empirical study of firms' sales distribution for France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Spain," Papers 2301.09438, arXiv.org.
    12. Mundt, Philipp & Alfarano, Simone & Milaković, Mishael, 2020. "Exploiting ergodicity in forecasts of corporate profitability," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    13. Akhundjanov, Sherzod B. & Devadoss, Stephen & Luckstead, Jeff, 2017. "Size distribution of national CO2 emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 182-193.
    14. Alexis Akira Toda & Yulong Wang, 2021. "Efficient minimum distance estimation of Pareto exponent from top income shares," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(2), pages 228-243, March.
    15. William Griffiths & Duangkamon Chotikapanich & Gholamreza Hajargasht, 2022. "A note on inequality measures for mixtures of double Pareto–lognormal distributions," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 280-290, June.
    16. Staley, Mark, 2018. "The Knowledge-Diffusion Bottleneck in Economic Growth and Development," MPRA Paper 87255, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Behzod B. Ahundjanov & Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Botir B. Okhunjanov, 2022. "Power law in COVID‐19 cases in China," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(2), pages 699-719, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gibrat's law; multiplicative idiosyncratic risk; inequality; power law;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

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