How does monetary policy affect income and wealth inequality? Evidence from quantitative easing in the euro area

Abstract

SummaryThis paper evaluates the impact of quantitative easing on income and wealth of individual euro area households. We first estimate the aggregate effects of a quantitative easing (QE) shock, identified by means of external instruments, in a multi‐country vector autoregression (VAR) model with unemployment, wages, gross operating surplus, interest rates, house prices, and stock prices. We then distribute the aggregate effects across households using a reduced‐form simulation on micro‐data, which captures the portfolio composition, the income composition, and the earnings heterogeneity channels of transmission. The earnings heterogeneity channel is important: QE compresses the income distribution because many households with lower incomes become employed. In contrast, monetary policy has only negligible effects on the Gini coefficient for wealth: While high‐wealth households benefit from higher stock prices, middle‐wealth households benefit from higher house prices.