Seminar: Sergio Ocampo, Western Ontario

Speaker

Sergio Ocampo, Western Ontario

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Western University in London, Ontario. 

I hold a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.  

My research interests are macroeconomic theory and heterogeneous agent macroeconomics.  

I am co-PI in the SSHRC Insight Development Grant "Wealth Patterns and Taxation" joint with Rory McGee (CAD 63 thousand, 2022-2024).  I am also a project participant of the RCN-funded project "Make Taxation Fair"  (FRIPRO, NOK 11.8 million, 2021-2026). 

I am part of the Grupo de Economía Laboral (GEL) of the Red de Investigadores.

On the teaching tab you will find the syllabi of the courses I have taught, as well as additional materials for the math camp and stochastic calculus courses.

Title

The Life-Cycle Dynamics of Wealth Mobility

Abstract

We use the universe of tax records in Norway between 1993 and 2017 to study the movements of individuals across the wealth distribution over the course of their work life. To summarize the underlying life-cycle patterns in wealth mobility, we group rank histories using a clustering tool from the machine learning literature. Many individuals experience reversals of fortune over their life-cycle. While the poorest and richest are stable groups with relatively lower mobility, a group of individuals see their wealth rank slowly decline over their lifetime, while another group steadily rises through the wealth distribution. We leverage the richness of the Norwegian data to dissect the drivers of wealth accumulation in each group. Highly educated individuals are less likely to drop in the wealth distribution later in life and more likely to rise, while parental wealth at age 30 is a more important predictor of whether an individual is lifelong poor or wealthy.