Trends in Inequality: Sources and Policy

我们开发了宏观经济环境中的结构性家庭生命周期模型，以评估收入，财富，工作时间和消费不平等对福利的影响，并将不平等的趋势定量分解为各种来源。然后，我们使用这些模型来评估财政和货币政策对不平等的影响，并描述福利改善政策。我们的方法将考虑到家庭生命周期各个阶段的相互依赖性，以及不平等、宏观经济和政策之间的三方互动。我们对数据的结构性解释将为预测不平等的未来趋势和政策设计提供关键信息，从而为政策制定者提供重要信息。我们根据两个主要的总体主题组织我们的项目，资源和政策，我们在两个工作包中描述。每个工作包都包含几个子项目（共12个），这些子项目相互依赖。这些次级项目强调生命周期的不同阶段，使用不同的数据集，分析不同的政策工具。在一个项目中加入力量具有实质性的方法优势，我们可以利用各自的数据集和建模不同的关键生命周期阶段和影响不平等的政策决策来借鉴彼此的专业知识。我们将通过几个小型内部研讨会、一个中型国际会议、科学论文、政策简报和我们的联合网站，在内部和外部交流我们的研究结果。

We develop structural household life-cycle models in macroeconomic environments to evaluate the effects of inequality in income, wealth, hours worked and consumption on welfare, and to quantitatively decompose the trends in inequality into their various sources. We then use these models to evaluate the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on inequality and to characterize welfare improving policies. Our approach will account for the interdependencies of all stages of a household's life-cycle and the three-way interaction between inequality, the macroeconomy, and policy. Our structural interpretation of the data will provide key information for predicting future trends of inequalities and for the design of policy, thereby providing important information to policy makers. We organize our project according to two main overarching themes, sources and policies, which we describe in two work packages. Each work package contains several subprojects (12 in total) that build on each other. The subprojects emphasize different stages of the life-cycle, use different datasets and analyze different sets of policy instruments. Joining forces in one project has the substantial methodological advantage that we can borrow from each other's expertise with respective datasets and in modeling different crucial life cycle stages and policy decisions affecting inequality. We will communicate our findings internally and externally through several smaller internal workshops, a medium sized international conference, scientific papers, policy briefs, and our joint website.