The Stone Centre is thrilled to be hosting Virgiliu Midrigan as part of the 2025-26 Stone Centre Inequality Seminar Series. Midrigan will be presenting his paper, titled “Why Are Returns to Private Business Wealth so Dispersed?”
Abstract
We use firm-level data to document that private businesses experience large fluctuations in their profit shares. These are due to large, fat-tailed and transitory changes in output that are not fully accompanied by changes in their inputs. We interpret this evidence using a model of entrepreneurial dynamics. Because firms can limit their exposure to risk by operating at a smaller scale, our model predicts large macroeconomic losses from uninsurable business risk, much larger than those stemming from credit constraints. While self-financing allows entrepreneurs to quickly overcome credit constraints, even wealthy entrepreneurs remain considerably exposed to risk.
Event Details
Date: October 20, 2025
Time: 3:30 – 5:00pm
Location: Iona 533, 6000 Iona Dr, Vancouver, BC
—
Virgiliu Midrigan is the William R. Berkley Term Professor of Economics and Business in the Department of Economics at New York University and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He completed his PhD at the Ohio State University. His research focuses on macroeconomics and international economics, with a special interest in price rigidities, financial frictions, and imperfect competition in the product market.