货币政策与不平等

中文摘要

我们围绕货币政策与不平等之间的联系提出三个问题。第一，货币政策是否影响不平等？尽管不同家庭因不同原因对货币政策变化作出反应，但我们认为，总体消费效应在各家庭之间的分布相对均匀。第二，家庭异质性是否会改变我们对货币政策传导的理解？对微观层面的消费行为更细致的刻画会实质性地改变我们对传导渠道的理解，但对我们关于货币政策总体效应的一般看法影响相当有限。第三，不平等是否影响货币政策的最优实施？由于货币政策是一种相当不够精准的分配工具，我们认为，即使中央银行承担明确的分配职责，也不会大幅偏离常规政策建议。

Abstract

We ask three questions about the connection between monetary policy and inequality. First, does monetary policy affect inequality? While different households respond to changes in monetary policy for different reasons, we argue that the overall consumption effects are relatively evenly distributed across households. Second, does household heterogeneity change our understanding of monetary policy transmission? A more careful account of microeconomic consumption behavior materially alters our understanding of transmission channels, but has rather limited effect on our general view of the aggregate effects of monetary policy. Third, does inequality affect the optimal conduct of monetary policy? Since monetary policy is a rather blunt distributional tool, we argue that even a central bank with an explicit distributional mandate would not deviate much from conventional policy prescriptions.