How much does inequality matter for the business cycle and vice versa? Using a Bayesian likelihood approach, we estimate a heterogeneous-agent New-Keynesian (HANK) model with incomplete markets and portfolio choice between liquid and illiquid assets. The model enlarges the set of shocks and...

We develop a macroeconomic framework in which firms are large and have market power with respect to both products and labor. Each firm maximizes a share-weighted average of shareholder utilities, which makes the equilibrium independent of price normalization. In a one-sector economy, if returns...

This paper aims at an improved understanding of the relationship between monetary policy and racial inequality. We investigate the distributional effects of monetary policy in a unified framework, linking monetary policy shocks both to earnings and wealth differentials between black and white...

The paper analyses adverse investment, growth and distributional effects of ultra-loose monetary policies based on the monetary overinvestment theories of Hayek and Mises. We argue that ultra-loose monetary policies create incentives to substitute real investment by financial investment. When...

We analyze optimal monetary policy under commitment in an economy with uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, long-term nominal bonds and costly inflation. Our model features two transmission channels of monetary policy: a Fisher channel, arising from the impact of inflation on the initial price of...

This paper studies the distribution of U.S. household income and wealth over the past seven decades. We introduce a newly compiled household-level dataset based on archival data from historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Complementing recent work on top income and wealth...

Based on the concepts of justice by Hayek, Rawls and Buchanan we argue that the growing political dissatisfaction in industrialized countries is rooted in the asymmetric pattern in monetary policies since the 1980s for two reasons. First, the structurally declining interest rates and the...

Parsimony is a desirable feature of economic models but almost all human behaviors are characterized by vast individual variation that appears to defy parsimony. How much parsimony do we need to give up to capture the fundamental aspects of a population's distributional preferences and to...

This paper studies how household inequality shapes the effects of the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates on aggregate dynamics. To do so, we consider a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) model with an occasionally binding ZLB and solve for its fully nonlinear stochastic...

We use Swedish administrative individual-level data to document five facts about the distributional income effects of monetary policy. (i) The effects of monetary policy shocks are U-shaped with respect to the income distribution - i.e., expansionary shocks increase the incomes of high- and...