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...

We study long-term returns on residential real estate in 27 "superstar" cities in 15 countries over 150 years. We find that total returns in superstar cities are close to 100 basis points lower per year than in the rest of the country. House prices tend to grow faster in the superstars, but rent...

This paper provides a household-level perspective on the rise of global saving and wealth since the 1980s. We calculate asset-specific saving flows and capital gains across the wealth distribution for the G3 economies - the U.S., Europe, and China. In the past four decades, global saving...

German history over the past 125 years has been turbulent. Marked by two world wars, revolutions and major regime changes, as well as a hyperinflation and three currency reforms, expropriations and territorial divisions, it provides unique insights into the role of country-specific shocks in...

The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. It is also among the most persistent. In this paper, we construct the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios...

Rising within-country differences in house values are a much debated trend in the U.S. and internationally. Using new long-run regional data for 15 advanced economies, we first show that standard explanations linking growing price dispersion to rent dispersion are contradicted by an important...

This paper introduces new real estate price indices for 18 major German cities and their neighborhoods (Stadtbezirke) as well as a new composite indicator for the German housing market - the German Real Estate Index (GREIX). The series are constructed on the basis of long-run transaction level...

Black Americans face higher cyclical unemployment risk than white Americans: job-finding rates during recessions are lower and the risk of becoming long-term unemployed is higher. Differences in unemployment risk across Black and white Americans imply that Black Americans optimally invest less...

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The...

Do current levels of bank capital in Europe suffice to support a swift recovery from the COVID-19 crisis? Recent research shows that a well-capitalized banking sector is a major factor driving the speed and breadth of recoveries from economic downturns. In particular, loan supply is negatively...