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Income Inequality, Financial Crises, and Monetary Policy

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Abstract

We construct a general equilibrium model in which income inequality results in insufficient aggregate demand, deflation pressure, and excessive credit growth by allocating income to agents featuring low marginal propensity to consume, and if excessive, can lead to an endogenous financial crisis. This economy generates distributions for equilibrium prices and quantities that are highly skewed to the downside due to financial crises and the liquidity trap. Consequently, symmetric monetary policy rules designed to minimize fluctuations around fixed means become inefficient. A simultaneous reduction in inflation volatility and mean unemployment rate is feasible when an asymmetric policy rule is adopted.

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  • Isabel Cairó & Jae W. Sim, 2018. "Income Inequality, Financial Crises, and Monetary Policy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-048, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2018-48
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2018.048
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    Cited by:

    1. Sandra Eickmeier & Benedikt Kolb & Esteban Prieto, 2018. "Effects of bank capital requirement tightenings on inequality," CAMA Working Papers 2018-43, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    2. Atif Mian & Ludwig Straub & Amir Sufi, 2021. "Indebted Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(4), pages 2243-2307.
    3. Cantore, Cristiano & Freund, Lukas B., 2021. "Workers, capitalists, and the government: fiscal policy and income (re)distribution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 58-74.
    4. Sima Siami Namini, 2022. "Quantitative Easing Policy and Income Inequality in the U.S. Economy: Evidence from a FAVAR Model," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 20(4), pages 759-779, December.
    5. François Gourio & Anil K. Kashyap & Jae W. Sim, 2018. "The Trade offs in Leaning Against the Wind," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 66(1), pages 70-115, March.
    6. Antony, Jürgen & Klarl, Torben, 2020. "Estimating the income inequality-health relationship for the United States between 1941 and 2015: Will the relevant frequencies please stand up?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy; Credit; Financial crises; Income inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • 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
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises

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