Labor, marriage and wealth inequality.

Summary This doctoral dissertation focuses on wealth inequality through the prism of two markets: the marriage market (chapter 1) and the labor market (chapters 2 and 3). In the first chapter, Normann Rion and I analyze the role of marriage, and more specifically of financial endogamy, in the formation of the high wealth inequalities observed in the United States. We use a dynamic life cycle model where each agent rationally chooses his or her spouse. This model predicts that a decrease in the marriage rate reduces inequality while an increase in endogamy increases the wealth gap between Americans. In the second chapter, we analyze not the sources but the consequences of wealth inequality, again in the United States where inequality is at its highest. In particular, we propose a link between the low wealth of young people (aged 21 to 30) and their wage trajectory following episodes of involuntary job loss. Indeed, the after-effects of youth unemployment are significant, which seems a priori inconsistent with the predictions of existing labor market models. Our contribution is to show that an explanation based on a career choice under a financial constraint is theoretically and empirically plausible. The third chapter, co-authored with Cem Ozguzel, is purely empirical. We revisit the very fact that young people suffer significantly from job losses, using German administrative data. The age profile of the cost of unemployment that we obtain for Germany is comparable to that documented in the literature on the United States.