The Effect of Public Wealth on Personal Wealth Distribution: Evidence from Econometric and Case Study Analyses

Diplôme Master The Effect of Public Wealth on Personal Wealth Distribution: Evidence from Econometric and Case Study Analyses eng 2025-06-16 author Franko Elena Julie 989146 director Morgan Marc 0000-0002-1761-4346 967858 Service enseignement, recherche, administratif et technique (SdS) (SCSPS) Marc MORGAN 70 This master’s thesis investigates the impact of changes in public wealth on the distribution of personal wealth in advanced economies. Against the backdrop of ongoing public debates about housing, ownership, and inequality, it explores the broader relationship between decreasing public wealth and increasing personal wealth concentration, a trend that has been observed since the 1980s. Based on the combination of various research strands, the study proposes two mechanisms. First, state-driven demand impacts asset prices, especially for limited goods like housing, and second, asset reallocation between the public and personal sectors shifts income streams, shaping personal wealth accumulation. Using data from the World Inequality Database covering 14 countries between 1996 and 2019, the analysis combines a pooled OLS regression with a set of robustness checks to reveal considerable variation across asset types and national contexts. A comparative case study of Norway and Germany confirms these findings but points out that aggregated national accounts data fail to capture important dynamics. Using housing as an example, the analysis highlights the need for more detailed asset decomposition, particularly within the equity category, and demonstrates how structural and institutional factors shape the relationship between public and personal wealth. Given these insights, the study emphasizes the importance of country-specific, asset-level analysis. The findings suggest that public wealth is more than just a political outcome. It is an important factor in the emergence of inequality, and its distributional effects need to be better understood in order to make informed policy decisions. Public wealth Personal Wealth Distribution Econometric Inequality Case study analyses Dewey 330 Dewey 330.9 Master in Political Economy of Capitalism 193 Institut d'histoire économique Paul Bairoch TE 123 Département d'histoire, économie et société T5 false c17f0faa-4c52-4942-bc4d-8db1503e8309 Master thesis Private Master_Thesis_Franko.pdf 3568245 application/pdf 3a9d29bb1f5ca9b84e076fc8dbd61673332fe2a5b0bdcf49802b94fd751d0bb5 closedAccess Faculté des sciences de la société / Institut d'histoire économique Paul Bairoch Faculté des sciences de la société / Département d'histoire, économie et société

Title	Published in	Access level	OA Policy	Year	Views	Downloads

The Effect of Public Wealth on Personal Wealth Distribution: Evidence from Econometric and Case Study Analyses				2025	55	29

Archive ouverte UNIGE

Franko, Elena Julie

account_balance Affiliation entities

Affiliation entities