Speaker: Luminita Stevens is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland. 
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Abstract: We study the determinants of capital income inequality in a general equilibrium port-folio choice model with endogenous information acquisition. The key elements of the model are heterogeneity in investor sophistication and in asset riskiness. The model implies capital income inequality that increases with aggregate information technology, given initial heterogeneity in sophistication. The main mechanism in the model works through endogenous investor participation in assets with different risk. Across assets, the pattern of expansion of sophisticated investors and retrenchment of unsophisticated investors, unique to our model, is consistent with asset ownership dynamics for the U.S. Quantitatively, the model generates a path for capital income inequality that matches the evolution of inequality in U.S. data.

Paper: Investor Sophistication and Capital Income Inequality written jointly with Marcin Kacperczyk (Imperial College) & Jaromir Nosal (Columbia University)

This seminar is held jointly with the IMF.

Last Updated: May 01, 2015