دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی نابرابری درآمد، سهام، بدهی خانوار و نرخ بهره - الزویر 2018

abstract

Using Philippon’s (2015) recently published historical household debt data, this paper uses Diebold and Yilmaz’s (2012) generalized variance decompositions and generalized impulse responses to understand the relationship between interest rates, the stock market, household debt, and the distribution of income in the U.S. The results indicate that increases in the stock market and household debt increase income inequality. Moreover, the relationship between the interest rate and income inequality is found to be negative and statistically significant. We interpret our results as suggesting that high income earners derive a larger portion of their income from interest rate sensitive assets

5. Conclusion

We have provided a long-run analysis describing the relationship between three key financial variables (interest rates, household debt, and equity returns (S&P 500)) and three measures of income inequality. We believe the longer time period used in this paper, from 1919 to 2009, gives us an advantage relative to other studies because the longer span of data allows us to observe the long-run response of inequality. We provide evidence for the different channels affecting inequality by analyzing how households earn their income. Using Philippon’s (2015) household debt data, we show that the stock market and household debt have significant effects on income dispersion in the United States. Interest rates have a direct effect only when we consider the Top 1% Thiel index. In summary, our results suggest that household debt and equities are inversely related to interest rates and associated with higher levels of income inequality. This provides supporting evidence for Kumhof and Ranciere’s (2013) debt-to-income inequality hypothesis and Stiglitz’s (2015) equity-to-income inequality hypothesis. Also, we document a direct link between increases in income inequality, defined as the income disparity between the top 1% and bottom 99% income groups, and low interest rates. The significance dropped when capital gains were excluded from the income shares. As such, we believe that our results suggest that low interest rates can exacerbate income inequality primarily because high income households derive a larger portion of their income from interest rate sensitive sources rather than wages. There may be additional explanations and our analysis is an attempt to help shed light on a few potential causes of inequality.