Alessandro Franconi , Giacomo Rella
We study the effects of monetary policy on the distribution of household wealth in the United States, distinguishing between interest rate and asset purchase shocks, using both the Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) of the United States and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Our first contribution is to demonstrate that the impact of monetary policy on wealth levels depends largely on the type of policy instrument. A decrease in interest rate shock initially increases net wealth across the distribution, with the bottom 50% experiencing the largest percentage gain. Over time, however, the effect remains positive only for the top 10%, while it turns significantly negative for the bottom 50%. The analysis of unconventional monetary policy presents a different picture. An asset purchase shock initially raises net wealth for all groups, with the bottom 50% experiencing the largest percentage increase, followed by the top 0.1%. However, this increase in net wealth is short-lived, as the effects of monetary policy fade away.
We show that the effect of monetary policy on net wealth for the bottom 50% of the distribution is entirely driven by the response of housing net wealth, especially following an interest rate shock. This is consistent with the fact that the bottom 50% is highly exposed to housing, with real estate assets accounting for more than half of total assets between 1989 and 2019. Consequently, as we move toward the top of the wealth distribution, the importance of housing wealth diminishes. Instead, the response of corporate equities and mutual funds becomes the main factor driving changes in net wealth after a monetary policy shock, particularly in the short run. Using data on aggregate revaluations, we also find that monetary policy shocks have heterogeneous effects on capital gains across the wealth distribution, especially in the short run. This is consistent with evidence suggesting that asset price revaluations contribute to unequal wealth growth following monetary policy shocks, beyond channels tied to income, inflation, and mortgage payments.
Πηγή:Banque de France