On the Role of Luck for the Concentration of Capital and Piketty's 'Fundamental Force of Divergence'

We consider an overlapping generations version of a model suggested by Fargione, Lehmann and Polasky that allows us to show, by means of simulations, that randomness of the rate of return on capital, combined with inheritance of capital and consumption being a concave function of wealth may lead to an increasing concentration of capital. We can also show that the average rate of return being higher than the growth rate of aggregate income, r>g, does not necessarily lead to increasing concentration and that there are cases where concentration of capital does increase while the opposite inequality, g>r, holds.

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Publication Details

Journal
Review of Economic Analysis
Published
2025-03-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.15353/rea.v17i1.5711
Primary Topic
Economic Theory and Institutions
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

On the Role of Luck for the Concentration of Capital and Piketty's 'Fundamental Force of Divergence'

Arnis Vilks
Review of Economic Analysis
Economic Theory and Institutions
article

On the Role of Luck for the Concentration of Capital and Piketty's 'Fundamental Force of Divergence'

Arnis Vilks
article en

Abstract

We consider an overlapping generations version of a model suggested by Fargione, Lehmann and Polasky that allows us to show, by means of simulations, that randomness of the rate of return on capital, combined with inheritance of capital and consumption being a concave function of wealth may lead to an increasing concentration of capital. We can also show that the average rate of return being higher than the growth rate of aggregate income, r>g, does not necessarily lead to increasing concentration and that there are cases where concentration of capital does increase while the opposite inequality, g>r, holds.

Review of Economic AnalysisVol. 17(1)
Openalex Percentile: Top 90%
Economic Theory and Institutions
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