Tag Archives: Income distribution

Monetary Policy and the Wealth Distribution

In a Staff Working Paper, the Bank of England’s Philip Bunn, Alice Pugh, and Chris Yeates discuss how monetary policy easing following the financial crisis affected income and wealth of different age groups.

The authors analyze survey panel data (ONS Wealth and Assets Survey) on households’ characteristics and balance sheet positions. They argue that

the overall effect of monetary policy on standard relative measures of income and wealth inequality has been small. Given the pre-existing disparities in income and wealth, we estimate that the impact on each household varied substantially across the income and wealth distributions in cash terms, but in percentage terms the effects were broadly similar. We estimate that households around retirement age gained the most from the support to wealth, but that support to incomes disproportionately benefited the young. Overall, our results illustrate the importance of taking a broad-based approach to studying the distributional impacts of monetary policy and of considering channels jointly rather than in isolation.

Quill Cloud

Conference on “Aggregate and Distributive Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policies” at the Study Center Gerzensee

Jointly with the Council on Economic Policies and the Swiss National Bank, the Study Center Gerzensee organized a conference on Aggregate and Distributive Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policies. The program can be viewed here.

NAFTA’s Effects on the US

On his blog, Dani Rodrik comments on NAFTA’s implications for US manufacturing and jobs.

So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts on adversely affected communities.

… Mexico has been one of Latin America’s underperformers.

So is Trump deluded on NAFTA’s overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes.

Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes.

Dynamics of the World Income Distribution

In a Resolution Foundation report, Adam Corlett examines the “Elephant Curve.” The curve shows that between 1988 and 2008 income growth in the 70th to 95th percentile range of the world income distribution was much lower than for almost all other percentiles. Since the lower middle class of rich countries is situated around the 80th percentile of the distribution the Elephant curve has been interpreted as evidence for stagnating middle class incomes in the rich countries.

Corlett emphasizes that

  • the country composition in 1988 and 2008 is not the same. Holding it constant the Elephant curve is less pronounced.
  • “Population changes, rather than just income changes, have driven the income growth distribution in the elephant curve.” Holding the relative population size across countries constant the Elephant curve is less pronounced.
  • There is lots of variation across developed economies. “[T]he weak figures for the mature economies as a whole are driven by Japan (reflecting in part its two ‘lost decades’ of growth post-bubble, but primarily due to likely flawed data) and by Eastern European states (with large falls in incomes following the collapse of the Soviet Union after 1988). Looking only at the remaining mature economies, far from stagnation we find average real income growth of 52 per cent with strong growth across the distribution, though slightly higher at the top. [But] there are great differences between these nations. US growth of 41 per cent was notably unequally shared, with low (but not zero) growth for poorer deciles meaning that the US comes closest to matching the stagnation and inequality narrative – despite international trade being much less important on a national level there than elsewhere [my emphasis]. But most people in most other rich countries experienced stronger growth.”