Daniel Albuquerque

Daniel Albuquerque

PhD Candidate in Economics

Department of Economics

Telephone
+44(0)7901685713
Room No
32L.1.25
Connect with me

Languages
English, Portuguese
Key Expertise
Macroeconomics

About me

Research interests
Macroeconomics (primary)
Inequality, Household Finance (secondary)

Job market paper
Portfolio Changes and Wealth Inequality Dynamics

Read the abstract and download the paper

This paper investigates the role of changes in households’ portfolio choices in explaining wealth inequality dynamics in three complementary ways. First, a decomposition of changes in US wealth shares between 1989 and 2019 shows that portfolio changes can account for 3.4 p.p. of the total 7.9 p.p. increase in the wealth share of the top 1%, mainly due to wealthy households holding a rising amount of high-return assets. Second, an analytical model shows that portfolio adjustments magnify the impact of a fall in top tax rates on wealth inequality beyond what their direct impact in savings would predict. The decrease in tax rates also induces a shift towards high-return and high-risk assets, which further increases savings rate and raises the volatility of households' portfolio, leading to higher wealth inequality. Third, I develop a quantitative model of households' savings and portfolio choice and analyse the decrease in US tax rate progressivity since 1975. Relative to when portfolios are kept fixed, allowing households to react by changing their portfolio composition amplifies the impact of taxes on top wealth shares by approximately 20% in the transition dynamics exercise from 1975 to 2019, and by 25% when in the new steady state.

Download the paper

Download CV

Contacts

Placement Officer
Professor Mark Schankerman

Supervisor
Professor Ricardo Reis

References
Professor Ricardo Reis
Professor Ben Moll
Professor Wouter den Haan

Contact information

Email
d.albuquerque@lse.ac.uk

Room number
32L.1.25

Office Address
Department of Economics,
London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE