IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v130y2020ics0014292120302282.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Monetary policy and wealth inequality over the great recession in the UK. An empirical analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Mumtaz, Haroon
  • Theophilopoulou, Angeliki

Abstract

We use detailed micro information at household level from the Wealth and Assets Survey to construct measures of wealth inequality from 2006 to 2018 at the monthly frequency. We investigate the dynamic relationship between monetary policy and the evolution of wealth inequality measures. Our findings suggest that expansionary monetary policy shocks lead to an increase in wealth inequality and contributed significantly to its fluctuations. This effect is heterogenous across the wealth distribution with the monetary shock affecting the median household relative to the 10th and 20th percentile by a larger amount than the right tail. Our results suggest that the shock is transmitted through changes in net property and financial wealth.

Suggested Citation

  • Mumtaz, Haroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2020. "Monetary policy and wealth inequality over the great recession in the UK. An empirical analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:130:y:2020:i:c:s0014292120302282
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103598
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292120302282
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103598?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karel Mertens & Morten O. Ravn, 2013. "The Dynamic Effects of Personal and Corporate Income Tax Changes in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1212-1247, June.
    2. Alvaredo, Facundo & Atkinson, Anthony B. & Morelli, Salvatore, 2018. "Top wealth shares in the UK over more than a century," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 26-47.
    3. Mumtaz, Haroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2017. "The impact of monetary policy on inequality in the UK. An empirical analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 410-423.
    4. Thomas F. Crossley & Cormac O'Dea & Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony B. Atkinson & Salvatore Morelli, 2016. "The Challenge of Measuring UK Wealth Inequality in the 2000s," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 37, pages 13-33, March.
    5. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2021. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(1), pages 115-175, February.
    6. Jing Cynthia Wu & Fan Dora Xia, 2016. "Measuring the Macroeconomic Impact of Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 253-291, March.
    7. Marta Banbura & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Large Bayesian vector auto regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 71-92.
    8. Ampudia, Miguel & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Slacalek, Jiri & Tristani, Oreste & Vermeulen, Philip & Violante, Giovanni L., 2018. "Monetary policy and household inequality," Working Paper Series 2170, European Central Bank.
    9. Giacomo De Giorgi & Luca Gambetti, 2017. "Business Cycle Fluctuations and the Distribution of Consumption," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 23, pages 19-41, January.
    10. Adrien Auclert, 2019. "Monetary Policy and the Redistribution Channel," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2333-2367, June.
    11. Matthias Doepke & Martin Schneider, 2006. "Inflation and the Redistribution of Nominal Wealth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1069-1097, December.
    12. Michele Lenza & Jiri Slacalek, 2024. "How does monetary policy affect income and wealth inequality? Evidence from quantitative easing in the euro area," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 746-765, August.
    13. Adam, Klaus & Tzamourani, Panagiota, 2016. "Distributional consequences of asset price inflation in the Euro Area," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 172-192.
    14. Ben S. Bernanke & Jean Boivin & Piotr Eliasz, 2005. "Measuring the Effects of Monetary Policy: A Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 387-422.
    15. Dario Caldara & Edward Herbst, 2019. "Monetary Policy, Real Activity, and Credit Spreads: Evidence from Bayesian Proxy SVARs," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 157-192, January.
    16. Casiraghi, Marco & Gaiotti, Eugenio & Rodano, Lisa & Secchi, Alessandro, 2018. "A “reverse Robin Hood”? The distributional implications of non-standard monetary policy for Italian households," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 215-235.
    17. Cesa-Bianchi, Ambrogio & Thwaites, Gregory & Vicondoa, Alejandro, 2020. "Monetary policy transmission in the United Kingdom: A high frequency identification approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    18. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/13388 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Marta Banbura & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Large Bayesian vector auto regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 71-92.
    20. Carlotta Balestra & Richard Tonkin, 2018. "Inequalities in household wealth across OECD countries: Evidence from the OECD Wealth Distribution Database," OECD Statistics Working Papers 2018/01, OECD Publishing.
    21. Facundo Alvaredo & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Lucas Chancel & Gabriel Zucman, 2018. "World Inequality Report 2018," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01885458, HAL.
    22. Elena Gerko & Hélène Rey, 2017. "Monetary Policy in the Capitals of Capital," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 721-745.
    23. repec:oup:restud:v:84:y::i:1:p:45-81. is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Mirela S. Miescu & Haroon Mumtaz, 2019. "Proxy structural vector autoregressions, informational sufficiency and the role of monetary policy," Working Papers 894, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    25. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Kueng, Lorenz & Silvia, John, 2017. "Innocent Bystanders? Monetary policy and inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 70-89.
    26. Erosa, Andres & Ventura, Gustavo, 2002. "On inflation as a regressive consumption tax," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 761-795, May.
    27. Bunn, Philip & Pugh, Alice & Yeates, Chris, 2018. "The distributional impact of monetary policy easing in the UK between 2008 and 2014," Bank of England working papers 720, Bank of England.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michele Cantarella & Andrea Neri & Giovanna Ranalli, 2021. "Mind the wealth gap: a new allocation method to match micro and macro statistics on household wealth," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 646, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    2. Haroon Mumtaz & Katerina Petrova, 2023. "Changing Impact of Shocks: A Time‐Varying Proxy SVAR Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(2-3), pages 635-654, March.
    3. Sangyup Choi & Jeeyeon Phi, 2022. "Impact of Uncertainty Shocks on Income and Wealth Inequality," Working papers 2022rwp-196, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    4. Gobbi, Lucio & D'Ippoliti, Carlo & Temperini, Jacopo, 2024. "The distributive impact of unconventional monetary policies – old and new," MPRA Paper 122934, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Thomas Gries & Lukas Wiechers & Sebastian José Luna-Victoria, 2023. "Unconventional monetary policy and wealth inequality: evidence from the US," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 43(4), pages 1865-1874.
    6. Marlin Jason Fortuin & Gerhard Philip Maree Grebe & Patricia Lindelwa Makoni, 2022. "Wealth Inequality in South Africa—The Role of Government Policy," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-11, May.
    7. Davtyan, Karen, 2023. "Unconventional monetary policy and economic inequality," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    8. Bernd Hayo, 2023. "Does the ECB’s Monetary Policy Affect Personal Finances and Economic Inequality? A Household Perspective from Germany," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202023, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    9. Makram El-Shagi & Steven Yamarik, 2024. "The Effect of Monetary Policy Shocks on Income Inequality across US states," CFDS Discussion Paper Series 2024/4, Center for Financial Development and Stability at Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, China.
    10. De Nora, Giorgia, 2023. "Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression with narrative identification. An application to monetary policy in the US," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    11. Hayo, Bernd, 2021. "Does Quantitative Easing Affect People’s Personal Financial Situation and Economic Inequality? The View of the German Population," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242331, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Bruns, Martin, 2021. "Proxy Vector Autoregressions in a Data-rich Environment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2019. "Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain: Assessing the role of unconventional policies for a decade of household data," Papers 1912.09702, arXiv.org.
    2. Anna Samarina & Anh D.M. Nguyen, 2024. "Does Monetary Policy Affect Income Inequality in the Euro Area?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(1), pages 35-80, February.
    3. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2021. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(1), pages 115-175, February.
    4. Andrea Colciago & Anna Samarina & Jakob de Haan, 2019. "Central Bank Policies And Income And Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 1199-1231, September.
    5. Michele Lenza & Jiri Slacalek, 2024. "How does monetary policy affect income and wealth inequality? Evidence from quantitative easing in the euro area," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 746-765, August.
    6. Cantore, Cristiano & Ferroni, Filippo & Mumtaz, Hroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2022. "A tail of labour supply and a tale of monetary policy," Bank of England working papers 989, Bank of England.
    7. José Alves & Tomás Silva, 2021. "An Empirical Assessment of Monetary Policy Channels in Income and Wealth Disparities," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 63(3), pages 432-449, September.
    8. Albert, Juan-Francisco & Peñalver, Antonio & Perez-Bernabeu, Alberto, 2020. "The effects of monetary policy on income and wealth inequality in the U.S. Exploring different channels," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 88-106.
    9. Anna Samarina & Anh D.M. Nguyen, 2019. "Does monetary policy affect income inequality in the euro area?," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 61, Bank of Lithuania.
    10. Albert, Juan-Francisco & Gómez-Fernández, Nerea, 2018. "Monetary policy and the redistribution of net worth in the US," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91320, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5srl83htc08lnqmtptsrb72rt9 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/5srl83htc08lnqmtptsrb72rt9 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2022_003 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Jérôme Creel & Mehdi El Herradi, 2024. "Income inequality and monetary policy in the euro area," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1), pages 332-355, January.
    15. Mäki-Fränti, Petri & Silvo, Aino & Gulan, Adam & Kilponen, Juha, 2022. "Monetary policy and inequality in a small open economy," Research Discussion Papers 3/2022, Bank of Finland.
    16. Mikołaj Raczyński, 2022. "Monetary policy and economic inequality: a literature review," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 53(2), pages 231-278.
    17. Merrino, Serena, 2022. "Monetary policy and wage inequality in South Africa," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    18. Sigal Ribon, 2023. "Differential Effects of Monetary Policy on Household Consumption: The Case of Israel," Israel Economic Review, Bank of Israel, vol. 21(1), pages 35-73, March.
    19. Ampudia, Miguel & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Slacalek, Jiri & Tristani, Oreste & Vermeulen, Philip & Violante, Giovanni L., 2018. "Monetary policy and household inequality," Working Paper Series 2170, European Central Bank.
    20. Albert, Juan-Francisco & Gómez-Fernández, Nerea, 2024. "The impact of monetary policy shocks on net worth and consumption across races in the United States," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 48(1).
    21. Domonkos, Tomas & Fisera, Boris & Siranova, Maria, 2023. "Income inequality as long-term conditioning factor of monetary transmission to bank rates," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    22. Hohberger, Stefan & Priftis, Romanos & Vogel, Lukas, 2020. "The distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing: Evidence from an estimated DSGE model," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    23. De Nora, Giorgia, 2023. "Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression with narrative identification. An application to monetary policy in the US," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Wealth; FAVAR; Monetary policy shocks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:eee:eecrev:v:130:y:2020:i:c:s0014292120302282. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    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.