Capital and Income Inequality: an Aggregate-Demand Complementarity

A novel complementarity between capital and income inequality leads to a significant amplification of the effects of aggregate-demand shocks on consumption. We characterize this finding using a simple model with heterogeneity in household saving and income, nominal rigidities, and capital. A fiscal policy that redistributes capital income causes further amplification, whereas redistributing profits generates dampening. After an interest rate shock, consumption inequality is more countercyclical than income inequality, consistent with the available empirical evidence

Sticky Prices or Sticky Wages? An Equivalence Result

We show an equivalence result in the standard representative agent New Keynesian model after demand shocks: assuming sticky prices and flexible wages yields identical allocations for GDP, consumption, labor, inflation and interest rates to the opposite case flexible prices and sticky wages. This equivalence result arises if the price and wage Phillips curves-slopes are identical and generalizes to any pair of price and wage Phillips curve slopes such that their sum and product are identical. Nevertheless, the cyclical implications for profits and wages are substantially different. We discuss how the equivalence breaks when these factor-distributional implications matter for aggregate allocations, e.g. in New Keynesian models with heterogeneous agents, endogenous firm entry, and non-constant returns to scale in production

Aggregate-Demand Amplification of Supply Disruptions: The Entry-Exit Multiplier

Due to its impact on nominal firm profits, price rigidity amplifies the response of entry and exit to supply shocks. When those supply shocks are negative, such as those following supply chain disruptions, this “entry-exit multiplier” substantially magnifies the associated welfare losses—especially when wages are also rigid. This is in stark contrast to the benchmark New Keynesian model (NK), which predicts a positive output gap in response to that same shock under the same monetary policy. Endogenous entry-exit thus radically changes the consequences of nominal rigidities. In addition to the aggregate-demand amplification of supply disruptions, our model also reconciles the response of hours worked across the NK and RBC models. And unlike the standard NK model, our model can also be used to evaluate how monetary expansions can alleviate or even eliminate the negative output gap induced by supply disruptions