IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uwa/wpaper/17-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Pareto Distribution And Its Relationship To Piketty’S Third Fundamental Law Of Capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • Jill Trinh

    (Business School, The University of Western Australia)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the Pareto distribution and Piketty’s third fundamental law of capitalism. It has been widely known that top income and wealth takes the form of Pareto distribution, yet there is very limited literature investigating the role of Piketty’s third fundamental law of capitalism, in which r (the rate of return on capital) > g (the growth rate of national income), in determining the shape parameter α of the Pareto distribution. The central takeaway of this paper includes: (i) a critical assessment of Piketty’s criticism of Pareto’s work on distributional inequality, presented in Capital in the Twenty First century (2014) in which he indicated that Pareto had an illusion of “stable” inequality; and (ii) a simple agent model to formally demonstrate the relationship between Pareto’s alpha and Piketty’s third fundamental law of capitalism. The first one concerns intellectual history and the second one has contemporary relevance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jill Trinh, 2017. "The Pareto Distribution And Its Relationship To Piketty’S Third Fundamental Law Of Capitalism," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 17-11, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwa:wpaper:17-11
    Note: MD5 = d730c7fb7e04446d3f96b2a8fc12b15d
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ecompapers.biz.uwa.edu.au/paper/PDF%20of%20Discussion%20Papers/2017/DP%2017.11_Trinh.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "New Theoretical Perspectives on the Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals: Part I. The Wealth Residual," NBER Working Papers 21189, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "New Theoretical Perspectives on the Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals: Part IV: Land and Credit," NBER Working Papers 21192, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "New Theoretical Perspectives on the Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals: Part II: Equilibrium Wealth Distributions," NBER Working Papers 21190, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "New Theoretical Perspectives on the Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals: Part III: Life Cycle Savings vs. Inherited Savings," NBER Working Papers 21191, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bonnet, Odran & Chapelle, Guillaume & Trannoy, Alain & Wasmer, Etienne, 2021. "Land is back, it should be taxed, it can be taxed," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    2. Odran Bonnet & Guillaume Flamerie de La Chapelle & Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, 2019. "Secular Trends in Wealth and Heterogeneous Capital: Land is Back... and Should Be Taxed," Working Papers hal-03570837, HAL.
    3. Josh Ryan-Collins, 2021. "Breaking the housing–finance cycle: Macroeconomic policy reforms for more affordable homes," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(3), pages 480-502, May.
    4. Kim, Dong-Hyeon & Lin, Shu-Chin, 2023. "Income inequality, inflation and financial development," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 468-487.
    5. Lee, Jangyoun, 2021. "Behind rising inequality and falling growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/56k383m9o9kpb1g6f8rvv74ok is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Eggertsson, Gauti B. & Robbins, Jacob A. & Wold, Ella Getz, 2021. "Kaldor and Piketty’s facts: The rise of monopoly power in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(S), pages 19-38.
    8. Fischer, Thomas, 2017. "Thomas Piketty and the rate of time preference," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 111-133.
    9. Yashin, Pete, 2020. "Financialization increases inequality and leads economy to a dead end," MPRA Paper 101061, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Jangyoun Lee, 2021. "Rentier premium and wealth inequality," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(3), pages 1994-2002.
    11. Carpantier, Jean-Francois & Olivera, Javier & Van Kerm, Philippe, 2018. "Macroprudential policy and household wealth inequality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 262-277.
    12. Odran Bonnet & Guillaume Flamerie de la Chapelle & Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, 2019. "Secular trends in Wealth and Heterogeneous Capital: Land is back...and should be taxed," SciencePo Working papers hal-03541411, HAL.
    13. Joseph E Stiglitz, 2018. "Where modern macroeconomics went wrong," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 34(1-2), pages 70-106.
    14. Frank Cowell & Dirk Van de gaer, 2017. "Condorcet was Wrong, Pareto was Right: Families, Inheritance and Inequality," STICERD - Public Economics Programme Discussion Papers 34, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    15. Corneo, Giacomo, 2015. "Inequality, Public Wealth, and the Federal Shareholder," CEPR Discussion Papers 10920, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Binder, Carola, 2019. "Inequality and the inflation tax," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-1.
    17. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2016. "The Theory of Credit and Macro-economic Stability," NBER Working Papers 22837, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Corneo Giacomo, 2018. "Ein Staatsfonds, der eine soziale Dividende finanziert," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 94-109, July.
    19. Palagi, Elisa & Napoletano, Mauro & Roventini, Andrea & Gaffard, Jean-Luc, 2023. "An agent-based model of trickle-up growth and income inequality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    20. Gaël Giraud & Matheus GRASSELLI, 2017. "The macrodynamics of household debt, growth, and inequality," Working Paper c15af656-d7a4-485c-867f-5, Agence française de développement.
    21. Mattauch, Linus & Klenert, David & Stiglitz, Joseph E. & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2022. "Overcoming wealth inequality by capital taxes that finance public investment," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 383-395.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:uwa:wpaper:17-11. 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: Sam Tang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuwaau.html .

    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.