Inequality and Welfare in a Low Rate Environment

摘要过去40年的特点是利率长期下降，与之相关的是资产估值上升。该提案由两个项目组成，它们考察了利率下降的分配效应。第一个项目探索利率下降对财富不平等的影响。第二种是通过关注谁从这一趋势中获益，谁从这一趋势中蒙受，来考察利率下降对福利的影响。该项目进一步从财务备案和调查中收集有关高财富收入的详细数据，以及有关资产购买的细粒度数据。该项目具有政策含义，有助于理解货币政策在财富不平等和个人福利方面的作用。第一个项目开发了一种充分的统计方法来确定较低利率对顶层财富不平等的长期影响，这是通过财富分配的帕累托指数来衡量的。通过结合财富调查、财务备案以及股票和公司层面的财务数据，创建一个关于美国亿万富翁拥有的公司融资的新数据集，以估计足够的统计数据。第二个项目将考察较低利率或较高资产估值对个人福利的影响。使用标准的消费储蓄模型，该项目将得出一个充分的统计数据，以捕捉较低利率对福利的终生影响。然后，该项目将使用关于整个财富分配的净资产购买的微观数据来量化这些统计数据。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThe past forty years have been characterized by a secular decline in interest rates and, relatedly, an increase in asset valuations. This proposal consists of two projects that examine the distributional effects of declining interest rates. The first project explores the effect of declining interest rates on wealth inequality. The second examines the welfare implications of declining interest rates by focusing on who gains and who loses from this trend. The project further collects detailed data on high wealth income, and granular data on asset purchases from financial filings and surveys. The project has policy implications in understanding the role of monetary policy on wealth inequality and individual welfare. The first project develops a sufficient statistic approach to determine the long-run effect of lower rates on top wealth inequality, as measured by the Pareto exponent of the wealth distribution. Sufficient statistic is estimated by creating a new dataset on the financing of firms owned by billionaires in the US, by combining surveys of fortunes, financial filings, and stock and firm level financial data. The second project will examine the effect of lower rates, or alternatively higher asset valuations, on individual welfare. Using a standard consumption-saving model, the project will derive a sufficient statistic that captures the lifetime effect of lower rates on welfare. The project will then quantify these statistics by using micro-data on net asset purchases across the whole wealth distribution.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.