Fabian Greimel (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School of Economics)
Falling Behind: Has Rising Inequality Fueled the American Debt Boom?
WIFO Research Seminar, Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Wien, 10.01.2024 12:30, http://tinyurl.com/yve8ue34
Organised by: Austrian Institute of Economic Research
Online since: 21.12.2023 0:00
This paper studies whether the interplay of social comparisons in housing and rising income inequality contributed to the
household debt boom in the USA between 1980 and 2007. We develop a tractable macroeconomic model with general social comparisons
in housing to show that changes in the distribution of income affect aggregate housing demand, aggregate debt and house prices
if (and only if) social comparisons are asymmetric. In the empirically relevant case of upward-looking comparisons, rising
inequality can rationalize up to a quarter of the observed debt boom.
