Selected Work in Progress

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Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in 15 Destination Countries

Joint with Leah Boustan, Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen, Ran Abramitzky, Elisa Jácome, Alan Manning, Santiago Pérez, and 31 others. NBER Working Paper No 33558, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 20003 (March 2025). R&R American Economic Review.

Abstract: We estimate intergenerational mobility of immigrants and their children in fifteen receiving countries. We document large income gaps for first-generation immigrants that diminish in the second generation. Around half of the second-generation gap can be explained by differences in parental income, with the remainder due to differential rates of absolute mobility. The daughters of immigrants enjoy higher absolute mobility than daughters of locals in most destinations, while immigrant sons primarily enjoy this advantage in countries with long histories of immigration. Cross-country differences in absolute mobility are not driven by parental country-of-origin, but instead by destination labor markets and immigration policy.
Funding: SNSF Project Grant 212814 "Intergenerational Mobility: Multi-Dimensional Patterns, Determinants, and Effects on Beliefs"

Intergenerational Mobility in Multiple Dimensions

Funding: SNSF Project Grant 212814 "Intergenerational Mobility: Multi-Dimensional Patterns, Determinants, and Effects on Beliefs"

Inequality and Redistribution in Switzerland: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA)

Joint with Enea Baselgia, Julian Koller, and Remo Gurtner

Mortality Inequality in Switzerland

Joint with Tim Kircali and Hannes Schwandt

The Composition and Mobility of Top Earners - Evidence from Switzerland

Draft (January 2019)
This paper is not dead, it's just resting.

Abstract: This paper studies income mobility at the top in Switzerland, where previous research Föllmi and Martinez (2017) has found that top income shares have been rising and have become more volatile since the mid-1990s. I use full-population social security data over the period 1981-2012 and find that persistence within the top 1% has been slightly decreasing, yet not enough to counteract rising inequality. In addition, I shed light on gender inequality at the top, and the share of foreign-born and self-employed among top earners in Switzerland. With a share of only 5%, women are strongly under-represented among the top 0.1% of earners. The share of foreign-born among the top 0.1%, on the other hand, rose from 20% to 40% in the 2000-2010 period. Finally, I study industry composition and the declining role of self-employment among top earners in Switzerland over the past 30 years.

Wealth and Income Mobility over the Life-Cycle - Evidence from Swiss Tax Data

Abstract: We use Swiss cantonal tax data to study the ratio of private wealth and debt to income along the income distribution, and the mobility of income and wealth over the life cycle. The individual income and wealth tax data from the large canton of Bern, covering the period 2002–2018, allows us to further distinguish between life cycle and cohort effects. We explore the heterogeneity by income and wealth percentiles, marital status, and gender. To better understand wealth mobility and how it has changed over the past two decades, we further study the role of inheritances and inter-vivos gifts for wealth mobility of different groups. In line with the macroeconomic literature, we find that wealth-income ratios have been increasing between 2002 and 2018. Wealth-income ratios are U-shaped over the income distribution and increase steeply at the very top, reflecting the strong correlation between the tails of the income and wealth distributions. On average, the top 2% held 10 times their annual income in net wealth in 2018 (up from 6.5 in 2002). For the upper half of the income distribution, the wealth-income ratio is mainly determined by real estate—with the exception of the top 2% of the income distribution. Our preliminary findings further suggest that wealth mobility is substantially lower than income mobility. Persistence in wealth rank is especially strong in the tails: the bottom 20% seem to be stuck in a wealth trap, while those in the top 1% hardly ever leave the top 10% at all, unless they die. After 5 years, 71% are still in the top 1%, another 15% moved down within the top 10%. Only about 1% moves below the top 10%, with the rest leaving the sample. This contrasts somewhat to top earners, of whom about 53% remain in the top 1%,but 10% move below the top 10%.
Funding: SNSF Project Grant 176458 "The influence of Taxation on Wealth and Income Inequality -- Long-Run Evidence from the Swiss Cantons"

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