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Financial and Total Wealth Inequality with Declining Interest Rates

Author

Listed:
  • Greenwald, Daniel L.

    (MIT Sloan)

  • Leombroni, Matteo

    (Stanford)

  • Lustig, Hanno

    (Stanford GSB and NBER)

  • Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn

    (Columbia GSB and NBER)

Abstract

Financial wealth inequality and long-term real interest rates track each other closely over the post-war period. Faced with lower returns on financial wealth, households with high levels of financial wealth must increase savings to afford the consumption that they planned before the decline in rates. Lower rates beget higher financial wealth inequality. Inequality in total wealth, the sum of financial and human wealth and the relevant concept for household welfare, rises much less than financial wealth inequality and even declines at the top of the wealth distribution. A standard Bewley model produces the observed increase in financial wealth inequality in response to a decline in real interest rates, when high financial-wealth households have a financial portfolio with high duration.

Suggested Citation

  • Greenwald, Daniel L. & Leombroni, Matteo & Lustig, Hanno & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2021. "Financial and Total Wealth Inequality with Declining Interest Rates," Research Papers 3948, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:3948
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3789220
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    Cited by:

    1. Paul Beaudry & Césaire Meh, 2021. "Monetary Policy, Trends in Real Interest Rates and Depressed Demand," Staff Working Papers 21-27, Bank of Canada.
    2. Felici, Marco & Kenny, Geoff & Friz, Roberta, 2023. "Consumer savings behaviour at low and negative interest rates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Fisher, Jack & Gavazza, Alessandro & Liu, Lu & Ramadorai, Tarun & Tripathy, Jagdish, 2021. "Refinancing cross-subsidies in the mortgage market," Bank of England working papers 948, Bank of England.
    4. Andersen, Torben M & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Grodecka-Messi, Anna & Mann, Katja, 2022. "Pension reform and wealth inequality: evidence from Denmark," CEPR Discussion Papers 17078, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Oren Levintal, 2024. "The Distributional Effects of Asset Returns," PIER Working Paper Archive 24-009, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    6. Paz-Pardo, Gonzalo, 2022. "Younger generations and the lost dream of home ownership," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 91.
    7. Atif Mian & Ludwig Straub & Amir Sufi, 2021. "What explains the decline in r ∗ ? Rising income inequality versus demographic shifts," Working Papers 2021-12, Princeton University. Economics Department..

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

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