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Non-Existent Moments of Earnings Growth

Silvia Sarpietro, Yuya Sasaki, Yulong Wang

arXiv 15 Mar 2022 · Econometrics · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2203.08014 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The literature often employs moment-based earnings risk measures like variance, skewness, and kurtosis. However, under heavy-tailed distributions, these moments may not exist in the population. Our empirical analysis reveals that population kurtosis, skewness, and variance often do not exist for the conditional distribution of earnings growth. This challenges moment-based analyses. We propose robust conditional Pareto exponents as novel earnings risk measures, developing estimation and inference methods. Using the UK New Earnings Survey Panel Dataset (NESPD) and US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we find: 1) Moments often fail to exist; 2) Earnings risk increases over the life cycle; 3) Job stayers face higher earnings risk; 4) These patterns persist during the 2007--2008 recession and the 2015--2016 positive growth period.

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Guvenen, F., F. Karahan, S. Ozkan, and J. Song (2021) What do data on millions of US workers reveal about lifecycle earnings dynamics?0.97413492%
2Bell, B. D., N. Bloom, and J. Blundell (2021) This time is not so different: income dynamics during the Covid-19 recession0.92843100%
3Arellano, M., S. Bonhomme, M. De Vera, L. Hospido, and S. Wei (2021) Income risk inequality: evidence from Spanish administrative records, Working Paper0.87482100%
4De Nardi, M., G. Fella, and G. Paz-Pardo (2021) Wage risk and government and spousal insurance, Tech0.87452100%
5Guvenen, F., L. Pistaferri, and G. L. Violante (2022) Global trends in income inequality and income dynamics: New insights from GRID0.73732100%
6Degiannakis, S., G. Filis, G. Siourounis, and L. Trapani (2022) Superkurtosis0.6443267%
7Trapani, L (2016) Testing for (in) finite moments0.6443267%
8Arellano, M., R. Blundell, and S. Bonhomme (2017) Earnings and consumption dynamics: a nonlinear panel data framework0.64422100%
9Meghir, C. and L. Pistaferri (2004) Income variance dynamics and heterogeneity0.64422100%
10Hill, B. M (1975) A simple general approach to inference about the tail of a distribution0.58531100%

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