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Top Wealth Shares in the U.S.: What is the Role of Family Firms?

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Andrew Atkeson explores the impact of family firms on wealth inequality in the US. Findings show significant mobility within the wealth distribution.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 7, 2023

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This video video discusses extreme wealth concentration in capitalist economies, particularly in the context of the U.S. It highlights the stark contrast between the wealth of top billionaires, often exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars, and the median U.S. household net worth of approximately $200,000. The research led by the author and a graduate student named Magnus focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to this wealth disparity, specifically examining the role of family firms.

Four key facts motivate their research:
1. There is significant wealth concentration, resembling a Pareto distribution.
2. The shape of wealth distribution has changed over the last century, peaking in the 1920s, declining during the Great Depression and WWII, and rising again since the 1970s.
3. A notable portion of wealth is self-made, with two-thirds of the Forbes 400 coming from relatively middle-class backgrounds.
4. Many wealthy individuals invest heavily in a single firm, often one that they or their family founded.

The research employs a random growth model to analyze wealth accumulation dynamics, noting that a small percentage of families take significant risks in family firms, while the majority maintain diversified portfolios with steadier returns. The findings suggest that rapid changes in wealth distribution can occur due to the success of those taking high risks in entrepreneurship, linking individual choices and societal financial structures.

The results imply that wealth creation in capitalism is not merely a function of having large firms and entrepreneurs but involves deeper connections between finance, risk-taking, and policy, including the effects of venture capital and pension system reforms. The authors advocate for further exploration into how such financial structures and policies impact wealth concentration and distribution.

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One of the most striking features of capitalist economies,

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you know, around the world is

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that the very wealthy holds so much wealth.

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And, this is readily apparent.

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If you look at any list of top billionaires,

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you'll see people who these days have hundreds of billions

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of dollars at the very top.

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And this is in a world where the average US household,

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I think the median US household has about

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$200,000 in net worth.

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So the differences between the median

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and the very top are just, astronomical.

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And so this simple observation raises the question of,

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you know, what is it about capitalist economies

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that generates this extreme concentration of wealth?

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And so my research, you know, I'm working with Magnus, ie.

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Who's actually a graduate student coming out

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of London School of Economics in Finance, is part

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of a rapidly growing literature on that question of

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how it is that we generate this great concentration

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of wealth in capitalist economies.

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And, and not only that,

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but it's looking at how has the concentration

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of wealth changed over time in the last century in the

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United States and in many other countries.

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And so what Magnus

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and I are focused on is the role of

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what we call family firms in driving the accumulation

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of great wealth and allowing it

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to change dramatically over time.

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And before getting into the details of like what we do,

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I just wanted to review kind of four facts that motivate us

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to take the approach we do.

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So I've already discussed the first fact is

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that there's extreme concentration of wealth, and,

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and that the top of the wealth distribution looks like it's,

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has a Pareto distribution, you know, so it's,

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it many things in nature have a normal distribution

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or a log normal distribution,

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but it stands out for wealth at it's Pareto.

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And that's how you, you know, that's characteristic

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of this extreme right tail.

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But the second fact is the shape of the top

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of the wealth distribution has actually changed relatively

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rapidly over the last a hundred years in the United States.

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It was very high in the 1920s.

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You know, the, we, we, it fell dramatically

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during the Great Depression and World War ii.

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It stayed kinda low until the 1970s or 1980s,

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and has now the concentration has now climbed back up again.

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There's debate as to whether we're at the 1920s level,

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but we're certainly at a very high level

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of wealth concentration.

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But then the, the next two facts are really

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about individuals.

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So one striking feature of a capitalist economy is many

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of the top fortunes are self-made.

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So in the Forbes 400, you see roughly two thirds

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of the Forbes 400 came from,

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they might have been middle class

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or upper middle class, but now

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They're extremely wealthy, in, in a single lifetime.

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And I, I stress that

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because, you know, a traditional notion

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of aristocratic wealth, you know, persists for generations

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and takes a long time to accumulate it.

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And then the fourth fact that really struck us is

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that if you look at the portfolios, the wealth holdings

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of the very wealthy, the vast majority of them

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have their investments concentrated in the

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shares of a single firm.

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It's a firm that either they founded

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or family member founded.

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And, and that's what we're, you know, that was that last one

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that really got us thinking about family firms.

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And this decision of wealthy people to

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hold these very constant, you know,

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put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, is what role

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that plays in driving, all of this.

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And so the premise of our research, you know, my research

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with Magnus is that all four

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of these facts are intimately connected.

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Uh, and, you kind of need all of them

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to be holding at the same time to understand,

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what's going on.

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Let me describe the model that we, we use.

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So, you know, before getting into our specific model,

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there's been research for a while now in economics to use

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what are called random growth models,

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which is something that we use.

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Uh, and,

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and so in our model, we'll have a random growth model

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with a, a starring role for family firms.

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But, you know, first, what is a random growth model?

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Why do we use it? So, as I mentioned, in nature,

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many outcomes have a normal distribution.

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The logic of this comes from the central limit theorem.

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This idea that you have

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to learn in an introductory statistics course,

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that if you add up a bunch of independent random variables

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and take the average, you know, as long as most of the time

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the distribution of

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that average is gonna be normally distributed.

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And so we see that with height or IQ

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or many natural phenomenon.

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And so wealth is different,

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but it's also interesting, you know, firm size is different.

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The distribution of firms, the biggest firms also are,

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you know, have a Pareto distribution

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and city sizes seems to have a Pareto distribution.

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So economists in a number of areas have been using

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random growth models as, you know,

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basically statistical processes that produce

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Pareto distributions as an, as a natural outcome

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for studying, you know, both the evolution of city sizes,

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firm sizes, the wealth distribution,

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and some other phenomenon.

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So we're in that class of research.

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Our specific model is that we have,

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families live forever, but they can be in one of two states.

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You know, at any point in time, 95%

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of the families don't have their own business.

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They, you know, work for a living

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and they invest their portfolio the way

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that a financial advisor would tell you

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to invest in a portfolio.

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They, they put it in a diversified set of securities.

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So we model the wealth process

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or the evolution of wealth for what, you know,

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families when they're diversified is having some mean rate

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that would be reflective of average rates

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of return on investments

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and, you know, the propensity of families

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to save rather than consume.

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But they have very small idiosyncratic, variants

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of their, returns, which will mean

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that when a family has a diversified portfolio,

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it's unlikely that it's gonna move very far up

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or down in the wealth distribution.

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Now, on the other hand, at any point in time,

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we model about 5% of families as having a family firm.

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So you envision somebody in your family comes up

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with a brilliant business idea, they're an entrepreneur,

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they start this, and the family puts basically all

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of their wealth in that venture.

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And what that means is they have all their eggs in one

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basket, and now they have a very high,

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idiosyncratic risk in their returns.

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This venture might pan out, it might not.

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And so, that's kind of the basics

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of the statistical model.

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And, then we have families transitioning from being,

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having a diversified portfolio to a family firm

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and back looking at, you know, how long does a family tend

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to run a firm on average there's some rate.

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And then they would, you know, maybe the, the, the,

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the firm fails or maybe they sell the firm

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and then they go on to go back

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to having a diversified portfolio.

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And, and so

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that parameter ends up being pretty important

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because, as I'll describe, so

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that's the basic structure of the model

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that we have a small set of families that are taking kind

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of extremely risky betts with their wealth.

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And then, you know, almost like

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they're buying lottery tickets.

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And then most families have, you know, very,

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very smooth returns.

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They don't have a lot of retic risk in their,

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in their returns to their wealth.

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Our first result,

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and perhaps the most important

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is just a mathematical one in the framework that,

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that for the model to allow the shape

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of the top of the wealth distribution to change rapidly

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to go, you know, say from the type

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of wealth concentration the US had in the 1960s

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and seventies to what it has now over the course of say,

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four or five decades, the model necessarily

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has to have, people

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who can move from the bottom of the wealth distribution

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to the top of the wealth distribution quickly,

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that those two mathematical properties of the model

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are necessarily linked.

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So in other words, if you set parameters of the model so

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that nobody is really taking big risks,

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you won't get self-made billionaires,

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but you'll get a very static

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or slow moving shape at the top of the wealth distribution.

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On the other hand, if you set parameters so that the,

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you do have rapid movement of those taking these risky betts

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and becoming self-made, then you can account

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for the rapid dynamics

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or the rapid changes in the shape

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of the wealth distribution that we've seen.

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So we think of that conceptually as kind of linking

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to observations

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that might have informally been put together,

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but saying they're mathematically necessarily related.

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And then the second is a kind of a more quantitative result.

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So, you know, what would you set the parameters

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of the model two there?

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We take as guidance, you know, to ask

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how much idiosyncratic risk are people

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with family firms taking?

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We use, data on the returns of individual stocks.

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So you could imagine if you as an investor just went

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and put all your money in Exxon or Tesla

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or any individual stock, what type

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of idiosyncratic return risk would you

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face that's very high.

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It's probably 40 to 50% standard deviation

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of returns in a given year.

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And then, and then there's also wealth data from

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Scandinavian tax registries.

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They have wealth taxes, or they had them

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for a while in Scandinavia,

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so they have more comprehensive data there.

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That also says that individuals

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who own their own firms typically have extremely volatile

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returns to their wealth.

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And so, you know, we then in the paper used the model

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to say, yes, with a very plausible set of parameters

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and amount of risk taking, we can account

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for the concentration of wealth

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and the changes in concentration of wealth

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and the portion of self-made, you know,

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very wealthy people, that we see in the data.

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So one, I might think at a, at an individual's level,

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if you were to be a young person who said,

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I really wanna become a billionaire, so

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so what's your best strategy?

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So we would say, you should ignore your financial advisor

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and put all of your wealth in one stock

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and hope that that pans out so that, you know, but,

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but that's tongue of tongue in cheek.

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That's, that's you, you know,

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ignore your financial advisor if you want to be wealthy.

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Uh, most of you won't make it, but somebody will.

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Um, no, but more seriously, we think one

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of the most important takeaways from the research is that

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there's a fundamental connection between,

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how we as a society, finance firms,

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and the creation of great wealth.

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So I've kind of stressed that it's odd

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that we see these families maintaining these concentrated,

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you know, investments in their firms

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because that flies in the face of the advice

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that you should have a diversified portfolio,

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and it means they're bearing quite a lot

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of idiosyncratic risk unnecessarily.

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And, you know, thinking more broadly in our economy,

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we have many very large firms

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and we have many entrepreneurs.

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And you could ask, does

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that necessarily mean we have great concentration of wealth?

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And, and we would say no.

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You, you see many large firms have a broad base of investors

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with no individual,

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no single individual having a large portion of the shares.

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And you know, they're probably owned by an s

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and p 500 index fund that then in turn is owned

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by many people with retirement accounts.

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And so you could certainly have large firms

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without any individual owner being, you know,

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fantastically wealthy.

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And on the other side with entrepreneurs, you think,

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you know, necessarily they have

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to invest their wealth in it when they get started.

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But there's a whole process for entrepreneurs to sell out

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of their business as it grows in the United States.

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We call this middle market investment banking.

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It's a whole industry to have, you know,

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investment bankers help you sell your firm when it gets

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to be worth a hundred million, 200 million,

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maybe 500 million in the middle market range.

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So you end up, you know, wealthy,

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but not with tens of billions of dollars.

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And so, you know, the, the question we think is,

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you know, the, the, the deeper question that needs

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to be explored is what, why do we find

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entrepreneurs who don't take advantage

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of the middle market opportunity to sell out, you know,

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sell out and diversify their firms, but instead hang on.

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You know, as the firm becomes gigantic.

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And, and, and many cases this passes down for generations.

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I mean, you see the Waltons doing it.

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The Pritzkers in the United States are the Hyatt.

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They, they made their money from Hyatt hotels.

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You know, you see this huge amount of wealth

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'cause they're following this and we think that

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this financial structure is amenable to policy.

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So Magnus in his, actually in his job market paper

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that he's coming out with, is focusing on what's the role

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of the rise of venture capital

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in changing the wealth distribution, the concentration

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of top wealth in the United States.

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So the rise of venture capital is very much the result of,

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reforms

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of our pension system in the 1970s. So that's where

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Venture capitalists, they get it from pension funds is

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where they get the money to invest.

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And then of course, you know, we've seen

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all these tech firms that go from nothing to, you know,

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hundreds of billions of dollars in a short period of time,

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often backed by venture capital money.

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So, I mean, I, I don't have time to get into the details

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of Magnus results,

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but that's an example of a, of, of beginning

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to think more deeply about

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how policy changes the financial system that then changes,

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you know, do we create, you know, great fortunes

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and to what extent do we do so,

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so we certainly think there's a lot more work to be done on

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that question.

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