Séminaire de Jean-Baptiste MICHAU

Séminaire de Jean-Baptiste MICHAU

Le 20 avril 2025

Le prochain séminaire du GAINS aura lieu le 20 mai 2025 de 10h30 à 12h00 en salle T204. Jean-Baptiste Michau (École Polytechnique) présentera "The Preference for Wealth and Inequality:Towards a Piketty Theory of Wealth Inequality".

Abstract: 

What are the consequences of the preference for wealth for the accumulation of capital and for the dynamics of wealth inequality? Assuming that wealth per se is a luxury good, inequality tends to rise whenever the interest rate is larger than the economic growth rate, and to fall otherwise. This induces the economy to converge towards an equilibrium with extreme wealth inequality, where the capital stock is at the golden rule level. Far from immiseration, this equilibrium results in high wages and in the golden rule level consumption for ordinary households. We then introduce shocks to the preference for wealth and show that progressive wealth taxation prevents wealth from being held by the richest people with high saving rates. This permanently reduces the capital stock, which is detrimental to the welfare of future generations of workers. This also raises the interest rate, to the benefit of the property-owning upper-middle class. By contrast, a progressive consumption tax successfully and persistently redistributes consumption and welfare from the very rich to the poor.

Ci-dessous un lien zoom pour ceux qui ne peuvent pas assister au séminaire en présentiel:

https://univ-lemans-fr.zoom.us/j/99117452533?pwd=UmGbQkFLhXMoRNn75cEZeYP1jbaKfb.1

Meeting ID: 991 1745 2533
Passcode: 648921