Wealth Inequality in a Low Rate Environment
研究了利率下降对财富不平等的影响，发现低利率通过影响企业家和食利者的财富增长，解释了美国超级富豪与普通富豪差距扩大的约40%。
We study the effect of interest rates on wealth inequality. While lower rates decrease the growth rate of rentiers, they also increase the growth rate of entrepreneurs by making it cheaper to raise capital. To understand which effect dominates, we derive a sufficient statistic for the effect of interest rates on the Pareto exponent of the wealth distribution: it depends on the lifetime equity and debt issuance rate of individuals in the right tail of the wealth distribution. We estimate this sufficient statistic using new data on the trajectory of top fortunes in the U.S. Overall, we find that the secular decline in interest rates (or more generally of required rates of returns) can account for about 40% of the rise in Pareto inequality; that is, the degree to which the super rich pulled ahead relative to the rich.