IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/revinw/v71y2025i1ne12720.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who Takes the Cake? The Heterogeneous Effect of European Central Bank Accommodative Monetary Policy across Income Classes

Author

Listed:
  • Elena Bárcena‐Martín
  • Natalia Martín‐Fuentes
  • Salvador Pérez‐Moreno

Abstract

This work provides evidence of the heterogeneous effects of the ECB's monetary policy across income classes. In particular, this investigation focuses on the labor market channel. Based on EU‐SILC data, we estimate country‐specific structural vector autoregressions (SVAR) models to analyze the impact of the expansionary monetary policy shocks over the 2006–2019 period. The results suggest that monetary easing helped decrease unemployment rates for lower‐ and middle‐income classes, to a larger extent for the former. This differential impact is accounted for a stronger improvement in job finding rates for classes located at the bottom of the income distribution. Conversely, the employment status of the upper class remained largely unaffected. The analysis identifies a positive impact of expansionary monetary policy on real labor income, which seems to have mostly benefitted the upper class. Overall, our results suggest that expansionary monetary policy helped decrease labor income inequality by exerting a stronger positive impact on lower‐income households.

Suggested Citation

  • Elena Bárcena‐Martín & Natalia Martín‐Fuentes & Salvador Pérez‐Moreno, 2025. "Who Takes the Cake? The Heterogeneous Effect of European Central Bank Accommodative Monetary Policy across Income Classes," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 71(1), February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:71:y:2025:i:1:n:e12720
    DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12720
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12720
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/roiw.12720?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:71:y:2025:i:1:n:e12720. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iariwea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.