The Forbes Four Hundred: The Determinants of Super-Wealth

Canterbery, E Ray; Nosari, E. Joe

doi:10.2307/1058378

Cited by 38 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…In 2014, the magazine published its first ranking of the richest families in the US (185 dynasties with fortunes of at least $ 1 billion) and started to rank the members of the top 400 by how much they had overcome adversity on the path to access, reserving the lowest score for those who inherited all of their fortune. Since its inaugural year, the Forbes 400 has proven to offer insights into the role of inheritance for the accumulation of great fortunes (Broom/Shay 2000;Blitz/Siegfried 1992;Canterberry/Nosari 1985).…”

Section: Clewi-deflated Trillion Us Dollarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The enduring importance of family wealth: Evidence from the Forbes 400, 1982 to 2013

Korom

Lutter

Beckert

2017

Social Science Research

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe social science literature proposes two competing explanatory frameworks for the existence and longevity of super-fortunes: superstar or winner-take-all mechanisms, suggesting an increased dominance of new self-made billionaires; and mechanisms focusing on inherited advantages, suggesting an enduring importance of old family fortunes. Using panel data from the USA's annual Forbes 400 ranking , this study analyzes factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of remaining listed among the American super-rich. We find initially that the percentages of self-made entrepreneurs among the highest wealth echelons of US society have increased significantly since 1982. Sectors that improved the most are finance (including hedge funds and private equity), new technology and mass retail. The decline of inheritance as a source of wealth and the rise of new tech and finance fortunes suggest low reproduction rates among superrich property owners. Family wealth, however, plays an important role if the longevity of fortunes is considered. While the literature predicts family fortunes to be taxed away, divided among a large number of heirs, or lost through incompetence, we find that scions of inherited great wealth (mostly up to the third generation) are more likely to remain listed in the Forbes 400 roster than self-made entrepreneurs. We conclude that even though entrepreneurship increasingly matters for becoming super-rich, it is first and foremost the ability of rich family dynasties to retain control over corporations and to access sophisticated financial advice that makes fortunes last. Zusammenfassung

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Section: Clewi-deflated Trillion Us Dollarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The enduring importance of family wealth: Evidence from the Forbes 400, 1982 to 2013

Korom

Lutter

Beckert

2017

Social Science Research

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“…While the SCF is designed to cover the full range of filers, its sampling rate at the bottom of the distribution used for sampling is low, and the shape of the wealth distribution of the least wealthy part of the distribution is almost entirely determined by the area-probability sample. 14 A relatively small number of cases in the SOI file represent returns for earlier years, typically amended returns. In processing the data for the SCF sample, only the most recent return for a given taxpayer is retained.…”

Section: Background On the Scfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lining Up: Survey and Administrative Data Estimates of Wealth Concentration

Kennickell

2017

FEDS

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The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has a dual-frame sample design that supplements a standard area-probability frame with a sample of observations drawn from statistical records derived from tax returns. The tax-based frame is stratified on the basis of a "wealth index" constructed largely from observed income flows, with the intent of heavily oversampling wealthy households. Although the SCF is not specifically designed to estimate wealth concentration, the design arguably provides sufficient support to enable such analysis with a reasonable level of credibility. Similar estimates may also be made by using tax-based data directly, as in [1], by using a construct very close to a key part of the SCF wealth index. Such an approach has appeal as a way of tapping a much larger set of information to improve SCF estimates. Not surprisingly, there are differences in the two approaches, largely as a result of conceptual differences or complications in the survey implementation. This paper focuses on the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution, the group most intensively covered by the SCF list sample and it explores the stability of the relationship between the patterns of concentration in the survey data and parallel patterns in tax-based estimates and considers how those patterns differ across survey participants, the full sample and the entire survey frame. In addition, the paper makes as series of recommendation for further research on the technical support of the survey. JEL codes: C83, D31 The views expressed in this paper are the views of the author alone and they do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or its staff. The author is grateful to all those whose work has made this paper possible, but particularly Fritz Scheuren, who as director of Statistics of Income at IRS first made it possible to use tax-return-derived data for the SCF sample design; Barry 1The Survey of Consumer Finances provides information on household wealth and its composition and relationship to other variables, on a common basis from 1989 to 2013. Because wealth is highly concentrated in the U.S., a survey that did not take special account of that situation would tend to produce very noisy (or even biased) estimates of values strongly influenced by the upper tail of the wealth distribution, such as means or concentration ratios. The SCF addresses this issue through the use of a list sample selected from statistical records derived from individual tax returns, as a supplement to a multistage area-probability sample. The list sample uses a proxy variable that supports oversampling of very wealthy households. That proxy and its relationship to net worth measured in the survey are the principal focus of this paper.The wealth proxy is a "wealth index" constructed from income flows and other variables available in the frame data for tax filers. The sample design assumes there is a mapping from the observed data to a wealth concept close enough to an actual measure of wealth approp...

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“…Heranças de patrimônio, por exemplo, têm um papel importante na transmissão de vantagens entre gerações para as classes mais altas (Broom e Shay, 2000;Canterbery e Nosari, 1985;Hurd e Mundaca, 1989;Keister e Lee, 2014;Lundberg, 1969;Russell, 1979;Stilwell e Jordan, 2007;Tickamyer, 1981;Wolff, 2002). Além disso, a transmissão não ocorre apenas entre gerações, mas, também, lateralmente, isto é, dentro de uma mesma geração.…”

Section: Estudos Anterioresunclassified

Educação e Rendimentos dos Ricos no Brasil

Medeiros

Galvão

2016

Dados

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O objetivo deste artigo é avaliar em que medida a educação pode ser considerada um dos principais determinantes da riqueza no Brasil. Definimos como ricas as pessoas no 1% mais rico da distribuição de rendimentos do trabalho. Focamos tanto na educação universitária em geral quanto nos cursos de elite, os quais são definidos como aqueles em que as chances de encontrar alguém acima da linha de riqueza são muito superiores às de outros cursos. Isso ocorre, por exemplo, com os cursos de medicina ou engenharia. Nosso interesse é na associação entre educação e riqueza, tanto no plano individual quanto no agregado, ou seja, queremos examinar como a educação aumenta as chances de um indivíduo pertencer ao 1% mais rico da distribuição dos rendimentos do trabalho e como os efeitos da educação universitária geral e de elite afetam os níveis totais de riqueza na população.Os ricos são um grupo-chave no estudo da estratificação social. As razões para estudá-los são quase autoevidentes, uma vez que eles se apropriam de uma fração desproporcional da renda de uma sociedade. Além disso, o controle dos ricos sobre recursos econômicos tende a influir também em outros domínios da vida, tais como a política e a cultura.

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The Forbes Four Hundred: The Determinants of Super-Wealth

Cited by 38 publications

References 5 publications

The enduring importance of family wealth: Evidence from the Forbes 400, 1982 to 2013

The enduring importance of family wealth: Evidence from the Forbes 400, 1982 to 2013

Lining Up: Survey and Administrative Data Estimates of Wealth Concentration

Educação e Rendimentos dos Ricos no Brasil

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