Concerns over rising inequality have heightened in the years following the 2007-09 global financial crisis and, more recently, with the COVID-19 pandemic. This staff discussion paper reviews the historical facts regarding income inequality in Canada, comparing Canada with the United States and...

This paper uses a simple model based on the board game Monopoly to analyze the drivers of house prices and wealth inequality. Simulations show that inequality generally builds up fast even if players have equal starting conditions and house prices are stable; rising house prices imply more...

In this paper, we study the impact of contractionary monetary policies on income and wealth inequality. By developing an Agent Based-Stock Flow Consistent model, we show that both the sign and magnitude of monetary policy impacts depend on the heterogeneity characterizing income sources across...

This study investigates whether the Federal Reserve (Fed) should care about inequality. We develop a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model, which generates empirically realistic inequalities and business cycle properties observed in the U.S. data. Households in the model economy are...

This paper analyses two-way interactions between monetary policy and inequality in selected advanced economies. In the context of a highly accommodative monetary stance over recent years, the analysis focuses on the effects of monetary policy on inequality over the business cycle via its impacts...

This paper analyzes the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on income inequality in Japan, using hitherto unexplored data from the Japan Household Panel Survey. Empirical evidence shows that expansionary monetary policy in Japan has contributed to diminishing the gender pay...

This paper examines the challenges faced by the European Central Bank since the outbreak of the global financial crisis. From 2008 to 2014, the need to preserve the correct functioning of the monetary policy transmission mechanism and ensure the supply of credit to the private sector stretched...

We study optimal monetary policy in a general equilibrium economy with heterogeneous agents and nominal rigidities. Households differ in type-specific, state-contingent labor productivity and initial firm ownership, yet markets are complete. The fiscal authority has access to a linear tax...