Heavy-tailed distributions and the distribution of wealth: Evidence from rich lists in Canada, 1999–2017

Abstract

I examine whether a power law distribution fits the top wealth distribution, i.e., the “Rich 100”, from Canada. I use a maximum likelihood framework that considers the fit of the estimated distribution as well as allowing tests against alternative heavy-tailed and skewed distributions. I find that while a power law distribution does fit the data well it is not possible to distinguish it from a lognormal distribution truncated to the upper tail.