Rising household debt: Its causes and macroeconomic implications--a long-period analysis
从长期视角分析美国家庭债务上升的原因，认为收入不平等和分配变化是主因，债务替代工资支撑了高消费和总需求，并讨论了这种模式的可持续性。
The article analyses the rise in household indebtedness from the point of view of its causes and long-run macroeconomic implications. The analysis is focussed on the US case. Differently from life-cycle interpretations of the phenomenon, and from interpretations in terms of erratic deviations of current income flows from their long-run trend, the rising household debt is viewed as the outcome of persistent changes in income distribution and growing income inequalities. Through household debt, low wages appear to have been brought to coexist with relatively high levels of aggregate demand, thus providing the solution to the contradiction between the necessity of high and rising consumption levels, for the growth of the system's actual output, and a framework of antagonistic conditions of distribution which keeps within limits the real income of the vast majority of society. The question of the long-run sustainability of this substitution of loans for wages is finally discussed.