Inequality and Real Interest Rates

Manuel Lancastre

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We use an overlapping generations New Keynesian model with borrowing constraints and a bequest motive, to show how an increase of income inequality may trigger a permanent reduction of the real interest rate, %, based on the heterogeneity of marginal borrowing and saving rates among household income types. (i) via a contraction of aggregate borrowing, when the marginal borrowing rate of the wealthier is lower than the one of the poorer with respect to income. (ii) We then show how an increase of inequality may trigger an expansion of savings through the channel of a bequest motive where generosity towards the next generation increases endogenously with lifetime income, so that the marginal savings rate of the wealthier is higher than the poorer.

Keywords: Income Inequality; low interest rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/85047/1/MPRA_paper_85047.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:85047

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().