IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bok/wpaper/1827.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary Policy and Income Inequality in Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Jongwook Park

    (Economic Research Institute, The Bank of Korea)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationships between monetary policy and income inequality in Korea. We calculate Gini coefficient for various income range using data from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey and then estimate a block-exogeneity VAR representing Korean and US economies to examine the effects of monetary policies on income inequality. The results show that following a one-standard deviation contractionary (expansionary) monetary policy shock, market income Gini coefficient increases (decreases) significantly after one year, reaching its peak to 0.0014 (0.14%p) while GDP and CPI decrease (increase) significantly by 0.48% and 0.15%, respectively. The contributions of monetary policy shocks to income inequality are found to be small as shown by forecast error variance and historical decompositions. In addition, earnings heterogeneity channel is most important among various channels through which monetary policy affects income inequality. Finally, a counterfactual analysis implies that if Bank of Korea held the call rate constant at 5.13% from 2008:Q3 and thereafter, the average of market income Gini coefficient would be higher by 0.009 (0.9%p) during 2008:Q4 - 2015:Q1 under the assumption of static expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • Jongwook Park, 2018. "Monetary Policy and Income Inequality in Korea," Working Papers 2018-27, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    • Handle: RePEc:bok:wpaper:1827
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.bok.or.kr/RePEc_attach/wpaper/english/wp-2018-27.pdf
    File Function: Working Paper, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 15-51, January.
    2. Masayuki Inui & Nao Sudo & Tomoaki Yamada, 2017. "The effects of monetary policy shocks on inequality in Japan," BIS Working Papers 642, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Mumtaz, Haroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2017. "The impact of monetary policy on inequality in the UK. An empirical analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 410-423.
    4. Kim, Soyoung & Roubini, Nouriel, 2000. "Exchange rate anomalies in the industrial countries: A solution with a structural VAR approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 561-586, June.
    5. Christina D. Romer & David Romer, 1999. "Monetary policy and the well-being of the poor," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 84(Q I), pages 21-49.
    6. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler & Mark Watson, 1997. "Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(1), pages 91-157.
    7. James Cloyne & Patrick Hürtgen, 2016. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Monetary Policy: A New Measure for the United Kingdom," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 75-102, October.
    8. Lutz Kilian & Logan T. Lewis, 2011. "Does the Fed Respond to Oil Price Shocks?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 1047-1072, September.
    9. Ayako Saiki & Jon Frost, 2014. "Does unconventional monetary policy affect inequality? Evidence from Japan," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(36), pages 4445-4454, December.
    10. Adrien Auclert, 2019. "Monetary Policy and the Redistribution Channel," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2333-2367, June.
    11. Matthias Doepke & Martin Schneider, 2006. "Inflation and the Redistribution of Nominal Wealth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1069-1097, December.
    12. Rory O’Farrell & Łukasz Rawdanowicz & Kei-Ichiro Inaba, 2016. "Monetary Policy and Inequality," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1281, OECD Publishing.
    13. Kuester, Keith & Gornemann, Nils & Nakajima, Makoto, 2016. "Doves for the Rich, Hawks for the Poor? Distributional Consequences of Monetary Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 11233, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Kueng, Lorenz & Silvia, John, 2017. "Innocent Bystanders? Monetary policy and inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 70-89.
    15. Robert Feenstra & Gordon Hanson, 2001. "Global Production Sharing and Rising Inequality: A Survey of Trade and Wages," NBER Working Papers 8372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ayako Saiki & Jon Frost, 2014. "How does unconventional monetary policy affect inequality? Evidence from Japan," DNB Working Papers 423, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    17. Cushman, David O. & Zha, Tao, 1997. "Identifying monetary policy in a small open economy under flexible exchange rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 433-448, August.
    18. Bunn, Philip & Pugh, Alice & Yeates, Chris, 2018. "The distributional impact of monetary policy easing in the UK between 2008 and 2014," Bank of England working papers 720, Bank of England.
    19. Furceri, Davide & Loungani, Prakash & Zdzienicka, Aleksandra, 2018. "The effects of monetary policy shocks on inequality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 168-186.
    20. Bound, John & Johnson, George, 1992. "Changes in the Structure of Wages in the 1980's: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 371-392, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sigal Ribon, 2023. "Differential Effects of Monetary Policy on Household Consumption: The Case of Israel," Israel Economic Review, Bank of Israel, vol. 21(1), pages 35-73, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anna Samarina & Anh D.M. Nguyen, 2024. "Does Monetary Policy Affect Income Inequality in the Euro Area?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(1), pages 35-80, February.
    2. Andrea Colciago & Anna Samarina & Jakob de Haan, 2019. "Central Bank Policies And Income And Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 1199-1231, September.
    3. Serena Merrino, 2021. "Wage inequality under inflationtargeting in South Africa," Working Papers 11018, South African Reserve Bank.
    4. Merrino, Serena, 2022. "Monetary policy and wage inequality in South Africa," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    5. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2019. "Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain: Assessing the role of unconventional policies for a decade of household data," Papers 1912.09702, arXiv.org.
    6. Marcin Bielecki & Michał Brzoza-Brzezina & Marcin Kolasa, 2020. "Distributional consequences of conventional and unconventional monetary policy," NBP Working Papers 327, Narodowy Bank Polski.
    7. Kilman, Josefin, 2020. "Monetary Policy and Income Inequality in the United States: The Role of Labor Unions," Working Papers 2020:10, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 20 Sep 2022.
    8. Bunn, Philip & Pugh, Alice & Yeates, Chris, 2018. "The distributional impact of monetary policy easing in the UK between 2008 and 2014," Bank of England working papers 720, Bank of England.
    9. Anna Samarina & Anh D.M. Nguyen, 2019. "Does monetary policy affect income inequality in the euro area?," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 61, Bank of Lithuania.
    10. Masayuki Inui & Nao Sudo & Tomoaki Yamada, 2017. "The effects of monetary policy shocks on inequality in Japan," BIS Working Papers 642, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Lucas Hafemann & Paul Rudel & Joerg Schmidt, 2017. "Moving Closer or Drifting Apart: Distributional Effects of Monetary Policy," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201721, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    12. Farhad Taghizadeh‐Hesary & Naoyuki Yoshino & Sayoko Shimizu, 2020. "The impact of monetary and tax policy on income inequality in Japan," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(10), pages 2600-2621, October.
    13. Albert, Juan-Francisco & Peñalver, Antonio & Perez-Bernabeu, Alberto, 2020. "The effects of monetary policy on income and wealth inequality in the U.S. Exploring different channels," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 88-106.
    14. Johnson Worlanyo Ahiadorme, 2022. "Monetary policy transmission and income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1555-1585, August.
    15. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2021. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(1), pages 115-175, February.
    16. José Alves & Tomás Silva, 2021. "An Empirical Assessment of Monetary Policy Channels in Income and Wealth Disparities," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 63(3), pages 432-449, September.
    17. Sigal Ribon, 2023. "Differential Effects of Monetary Policy on Household Consumption: The Case of Israel," Israel Economic Review, Bank of Israel, vol. 21(1), pages 35-73, March.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5srl83htc08lnqmtptsrb72rt9 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Casiraghi, Marco & Gaiotti, Eugenio & Rodano, Lisa & Secchi, Alessandro, 2018. "A “reverse Robin Hood”? The distributional implications of non-standard monetary policy for Italian households," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 215-235.
    20. Hohberger, Stefan & Priftis, Romanos & Vogel, Lukas, 2020. "The distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing: Evidence from an estimated DSGE model," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    21. Jérôme Creel & Mehdi El Herradi, 2024. "Income inequality and monetary policy in the euro area," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1), pages 332-355, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary Policy; Income Inequality; Block-exogeneity; VAR;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bok:wpaper:1827. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Economic Research Institute (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imbokkr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.