Monetary Policy and Inequality

The Council on Economic Policies (CEP) and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta organized a workshop on Monetary Policy and Inequality on 3-4 April 2014 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, income and wealth inequality has been rising in most economies (see, e.g., Atkinson, Piketty and Saez, 2011). Several factors are claimed to be at the roots of this drift; however, even after taking them into account, a large part of the growing gap between high and low incomes or wealth remains unexplained (Bulir, 2001).

Some recent literature examines the role that monetary policy may play in this development (see, e.g., Coibion, Gorodnichenko, Kueng and Silvia, 2012). In addition, central banks are increasingly asked by public stakeholders to evaluate the distributive impacts of monetary policy. Yet, economic research today is too scarce to provide a comprehensive answer.

Against this background, the goal of this workshop was to convene academics and monetary policy practitioners to present their current research on the link between monetary policy and inequality in order to better understand the connection between them.

Workshop Committee

• Tiago Berriel, Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro
• Paola Boel, Sveriges Riksbank
• Michael Bryan, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
• Davide Furceri, International Monetary Fund
• Rossana Galli, University of Lugano, Switzerland
• Pierre Monnin, Council on Economic Policies
• John Robertson, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
• Robert Triest, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston