In this thesis, we address the macro-economic problem that aggregated micro
data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) of the ECB
does not match the macro data from national accounts (NtlA) statistics. Earlier
studies have already identified that extremely wealthy households are generally underrepresented
in household surveys. In Chapter 2, we present a method proposed
by Vermeulen ([22]) to overcome this underrepresentation of very rich households.
He suggests to combine the HFCS data with rich lists, enabling an estimation of the
upper part of the wealth distribution via a Pareto distribution. After estimating
this distribution, it is possible to sample further households of the upper part of the
wealth distribution. To justify this method we additionally provide an overview of
some wealth accumulation processes that lead to a Pareto distribution for wealth
in the long term. Though some parts of the discrepancies between HFCS and NtlA
statistics are explained by the missing wealthy, Chakraborty and Waltl ([5]) find
that large parts are still unexplained. Therefore, we provide a solution to close the
persisting gaps via an optimization problem that aims at preserving the level of inequality.
Finally, we compare the findings with an approach that uses a multivariate
calibration via a small case study covering household wealth of Germany.
«
In this thesis, we address the macro-economic problem that aggregated micro
data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) of the ECB
does not match the macro data from national accounts (NtlA) statistics. Earlier
studies have already identified that extremely wealthy households are generally underrepresented
in household surveys. In Chapter 2, we present a method proposed
by Vermeulen ([22]) to overcome this underrepresentation of very rich households.
He suggests to combin...
»