This paper investigates the relationship between wealth inequality and financial crises. While substantiation of a role for income inequality remains ambiguous in the literature, evidence is presented suggesting a positive relationship between the interaction of wealth inequality with aggregate wealth on systemic financial crises. The evidence is based on panel data for nine countries, some of which expand into the last century, and a linear probability model estimated with country and year fixed effects. The relationship is consistent when accounting for overall financial sector size, credit growth, the money supply, current account, asset bubbles, and robust to estimation method. No significant role is found for income inequality. Predicted probabilities of financial crisis closely track the incidence of financial crises over the last century, remarkably so when compared against a leading benchmark model. It is argued that the empirical relationship between wealth inequality, aggregate wealth and financial crises reveals an important role for the distribution of accumulated assets in the macro-financial stability of rich countries. The distribution of stocks may capture structural vulnerabilities that the distribution of flows cannot expose, and hence more unequal countries in wealth face greater financial instability. An economic network hypothesis is proposed for interpreting the empirical results.

中文翻译：

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总财富及其分配是金融危机的决定因素

本文研究了财富不平等与金融危机之间的关系。尽管文献中关于收入不平等的作用的证据仍然不明确，但有证据表明，在系统性金融危机中，财富不平等与总财富之间的相互作用呈正相关。证据基于九个国家的面板数据，其中一些扩展到了上个世纪，并且是根据国家和年份固定效应估算的线性概率模型。在考虑总体金融部门规模，信贷增长，货币供应量，经常账户，资产泡沫以及估计方法的稳健性时，这种关系是一致的。没有发现收入不平等的重要作用。预测的金融危机发生概率密切跟踪了上个世纪的金融危机发生率，与领先的基准模型相比，情况尤其如此。有人认为，财富不平等，总财富和金融危机之间的经验关系揭示了积累资产分配在富裕国家宏观金融稳定中的重要作用。存量的分配可能会捕捉流动性分配无法暴露的结构性脆弱性，因此，财富分配不均的国家面临更大的金融动荡。提出了一种经济网络假设来解释经验结果。存量的分配可能会捕捉流动性分配无法暴露的结构性脆弱性，因此，财富分配不均的国家面临更大的金融动荡。提出了一种经济网络假设来解释经验结果。存量的分配可能会捕捉流动性分配无法暴露的结构性脆弱性，因此，财富分配不均的国家面临更大的金融动荡。提出了一种经济网络假设来解释经验结果。