Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 10/04/2026Ik vind het een sympathiek voorstel maar bij "vrije geesten" kan ik alleen maar aan de "vrije jongens" hieronder denken www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opin... 000
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 16/02/2025Successfully defended my PhD on the wealth distribution! Many thanks to my supervisors, the committee (@basjacobs.bsky.social, @danielwaldenstrom.bsky.social @cmtneztt.bsky.social et al), my paranymphs and all who attended! My dissertation can be found here: research-portal.uu.nl/en/publicati... 4340
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 19/11/2024Good choice! I am personally even more partial to appelbeignets 020
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 17/11/2024Post a picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline 060
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024I show that accounting returns are flat or even decreasing in firm size, in contradiction with the theoretical literature. Happily, my adjusted returns do show a steep & positive gradient, consistent with theory 14/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024To recap: aggregate firm wealth is both larger & more stable than book values, and aligns more with underlying economic fundamentals. Top wealth shares also increase strongly: here are the adjusted top 1% shares. They increase by 3-5 pp on average. Top 0.1% also increase by this amount 12/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024Why are yellow and blue so different? Well, There is good reason to believe that book values are fiscally manipulated: after 2013, it became tax-advantageous for firm-owners to reallocate their money towards their firms, which you can see in the plot below My estimates do not suffer from this 11/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024What are the results of all this math? First, aggregate firm wealth increases substantially and is more stable! Yellow = true market value, blue = book value, green = initial estimate, red = capital We see that my procedure is necessary; simply using an initial estimate (green) is insufficient 10/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024I apply my method to the Netherlands, where I can link the universe of incorporated firms to their owners. Private firms matter a lot for top wealth inequality: they are 80% of the top 0.01%'s portfolio! 8/ 220
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024Griliches & Hausman formalize this intuition and I use their framework to derive several valid IVs. Since there is only one endogenous variable (the capital stock), we can test overidentifying restrictions. Then, fitted values from this IV/GMM regression will be error-free market values 7/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024Consider a variable x with measurement error ξ. Compare the first-dif estimator to the fixed-effects estimator, and they will be biased like below But this is 2 equations in 2 unknowns (β and variance of ξ)! Intuitively, the differences in bias betw the regs gives identifying information 6/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024What is this regression? Well, in neoclassical investment theory, it is simply the equation for Tobin's q! But this holds more generally: I show that even when firms have markups and/or decreasing returns to scale, firm value is approx linear in their capital stock 4/ 110
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 14/11/2024📯 Job Market Paper Alert 📯 Private businesses make up 50% of sales & profits and are the main wealth component of the wealthiest households. So, what is their value? Well, that's difficult, since they're not listed: their value is unobservable by definition! My #EconJMP tackles this problem 1/ 25018
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 03/11/2024Happy to be in Stockholm, presenting my paper "Robust Estimation of Private Business Wealth" tomorrow at the IFN! #EconSky Very special to catch a Yo-Yo Ma concert this evening, finally seeing him live! 030
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 21/03/2024Happy to be in Paris to present my paper "Top Wealth is Distributed Weibull, not Pareto" at the Paris School of Economics! 030
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 23/11/2023What are implications for models that use Pareto? One major one is for optimal tax. The Diamond-Saez formula for the optimal top tax rate converges to a constant with Pareto income. With Weibull, that is no longer so (at least if the behavioral elasticity stays constant) 8/ 110
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 23/11/2023How can we microfound Gompertz/Weibull? One possibility we like is that on stochastic networks, the length distribution of *Self-Avoiding-Walks* is Gompertz. These are paths that do not visit a node twice, like the game Snake. How to use this? E.g. City size must be bounded by area already used 7/ 110
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 23/11/2023Weibull is much more convenient than Pareto because all its moments exist. We can use it to predict mean billionaire wealth for different regions. The table shows 1) Weibull does extremely well; 2) Pareto fails miserably, with infinite and nonsensically large values in majority of cases 6/ 111
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 23/11/2023Our alternative is (truncated-)Weibull. If W is Weibull, log W is Gompertz. This distribution has an exponentially increasing (cumulative) hazard. If W is Pareto, in contrast, log W has a linear (cumulative) hazard. Judge for yourself below, data for wealth. 5/ 100
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 23/11/2023E[w^k] = k! * α^k; hence, E[w] = α. Substitute back and rescale to obtain our test statistic R_k = E[w^k]/k!*E[w]^k. R_k should equal 1 if W is Pareto; this is our (sharp) test. See the values of R_2 and R_3 for firm size below: Clearly not equal to 1 (same for wealth & city size). 3/ 200
Simon Toussaint @simontoussaint.nl · 23/11/2023Hello #EconSky, have I got an exciting new working paper for you! Coen Teulings and I study three distributions (wealth, city and firm size), which are always thought to be distributed Pareto. Bottom line: These distributions are *not* Pareto, but Weibull! A thread 1/ 24014