ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a survey of the recent literature that evaluates, in an empirical way, the distributional impacts of monetary policy. In the first two sessions, we discuss, respectively, the transmission channels of monetary policy to income distribution and the empirical strategies used to measure it. The majority of surveyed papers find that a contractionary monetary policy worsen the income distribution, and that an expansionist policy tends to improve it. Moreover, several papers found that the higher is the redistributive impact of fiscal policy, the lower is the impact of monetary policy on inequality. Another outcome with empirical support is the role of the labor share on total income: the higher is this share, the higher is the impact of monetary policy on inequality. The last point discussed is the asymmetric effects of contractionary and expansionary monetary policy. There is evidence that increases in interest rates have statistically significant effects on income distribution, whereas the effects of reductions in interest rates are not statistically different from zero. This empirical finding goes against the conventional view that the distributional effects of interest rate changes are temporary and likely to net out over the business cycle.

摘要

本文的目的是对最近的文献进行调查，这些文献以实证的方式评估货币政策的分配影响。在前两节中，我们分别讨论了货币政策对收入分配的传导渠道和衡量它的实证策略。大多数接受调查的论文发现，紧缩性货币政策会恶化收入分配，而扩张性政策往往会改善收入分配。此外，几篇论文发现，财政政策的再分配影响越大，货币政策对不平等的影响越小。另一个有实证支持的结果是劳动份额对总收入的作用：这一份额越高，货币政策对不平等的影响就越大。讨论的最后一点是紧缩性和扩张性货币政策的不对称效应。有证据表明，利率上升对收入分配具有统计上的显着影响，而利率下降的影响在统计上与零没有差异。这一实证发现与传统观点相反，即利率变化的分配效应是暂时的，并且可能会在整个商业周期中消失。