Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DisMaLS (Distributional Macroeconomics in the Long and Short Run)
Reporting period: 2021-08-01 to 2023-01-31
A key development in the "dismal science" has been the incorporation of explicit heterogeneity into models of the macroeconomy. As a result of taking micro data seriously, these theories study macroeconomic questions in terms of distributions of microeconomic variables like income or wealth rather than just aggregates. This approach opens up the door to examining the distributional implications of macroeconomic trends, shocks or policies, and to examine the two-way interaction between these distributions and the macroeconomy.
DisMaLS has been advancing this "distributional macroeconomics" agenda both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, it has done so by developing new theories of the income and wealth distributions and their interactions with the macroeconomy in both the long and short run. Empirically, DisMaLS has brought to the table high-quality Norwegian administrative data to discipline and enrich these theories.
In terms of long-run trends, a striking feature regarding economic growth in many developed countries is that it has been unequally distributed. For example, in the U.S. real household incomes have grown by roughly two percent per year on average but income percentiles corresponding to the bottom 50% of the distribution have stagnated since the 1970s. DisMaLS has used a theory of income and wealth distribution to examine the potential drivers of these distributional trends, in particular automation and rising asset prices.
Turning to the short-run, DisMaLS has addressed some of the important policy challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the project has developed integrated economic and epidemiological models for providing quantitative answers to such policy questions.
DisMaLS has been advancing this "distributional macroeconomics" agenda both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, it has done so by developing new theories of the income and wealth distributions and their interactions with the macroeconomy in both the long and short run. Empirically, DisMaLS has brought to the table high-quality Norwegian administrative data to discipline and enrich these theories.
In terms of long-run trends, a striking feature regarding economic growth in many developed countries is that it has been unequally distributed. For example, in the U.S. real household incomes have grown by roughly two percent per year on average but income percentiles corresponding to the bottom 50% of the distribution have stagnated since the 1970s. DisMaLS has used a theory of income and wealth distribution to examine the potential drivers of these distributional trends, in particular automation and rising asset prices.
Turning to the short-run, DisMaLS has addressed some of the important policy challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the project has developed integrated economic and epidemiological models for providing quantitative answers to such policy questions.
DisMaLS is composed of three main parts. Part has developed a theory of the joint distribution of labor income, capital income and wealth and used it to evaluate a number of candidate explanations of long-run trends in income and wealth inequality. Part II has developed integrated economic and epidemiological models to study the COVID-19 pandemic. Part III will leverage high-quality Norwegian administrative data to empirically discipline and enrich theories of income and wealth distribution as well as to understand their welfare implications, in particular those of changing asset prices which have been a major driver of wealth inequality.
Part I: this part has progressed well and according to the original plan. It has resulted in a paper "Uneven Growth: Automation’s Impact on Income and Wealth Inequality" that has been accepted for publication and a number of working papers that study the effect of asset price changes on wealth inequality and welfare. I started working on a project for a textbook about "Distributional Macroeconomics" at the graduate student (PhD) level with one of my long-term collaborators, Greg Kaplan.
Part II: this part has resulted in a working paper "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S." https://benjaminmoll.com/PPF/ which already has a large number of Google Scholar citations and these lecture notes https://benjaminmoll.com/SIR_notes/ which were widely circulated and influential among economists. We also reported the policy implications to the UK Treasury Select Committee (https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18792/html/) the UK Cabinet Office, the Mexican Finance Minister, the Germany Ministry of Finance, among others. This research also forms the backbone of a UK Royal Society Report https://rs-delve.github.io/reports/2020/08/14/economic-aspects-of-the-covid19-crisis-in-the-uk.html. The output of the project was also presented at the "Nobel Symposium Covid-19 and the Economy: Policies and Impacts" http://hassler-j.iies.su.se/nobel/covid.html see slides here https://benjaminmoll.com/six_lessons/.
Part III: this part has progressed well and according to the original plan. The result are two completed working papers, "Saving Behavior Across the Wealth Distribution: The Importance of Capital Gains" http://benjaminmoll.com/SBWD/ and "Asset-Price Redistribution" http://benjaminmoll.com/APR/ already mentioned in Part I. The former is currently being revised for publication in the journal “Review of Economic Studies.” The latter will be sent to an academic journal soon.
Part I: this part has progressed well and according to the original plan. It has resulted in a paper "Uneven Growth: Automation’s Impact on Income and Wealth Inequality" that has been accepted for publication and a number of working papers that study the effect of asset price changes on wealth inequality and welfare. I started working on a project for a textbook about "Distributional Macroeconomics" at the graduate student (PhD) level with one of my long-term collaborators, Greg Kaplan.
Part II: this part has resulted in a working paper "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S." https://benjaminmoll.com/PPF/ which already has a large number of Google Scholar citations and these lecture notes https://benjaminmoll.com/SIR_notes/ which were widely circulated and influential among economists. We also reported the policy implications to the UK Treasury Select Committee (https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18792/html/) the UK Cabinet Office, the Mexican Finance Minister, the Germany Ministry of Finance, among others. This research also forms the backbone of a UK Royal Society Report https://rs-delve.github.io/reports/2020/08/14/economic-aspects-of-the-covid19-crisis-in-the-uk.html. The output of the project was also presented at the "Nobel Symposium Covid-19 and the Economy: Policies and Impacts" http://hassler-j.iies.su.se/nobel/covid.html see slides here https://benjaminmoll.com/six_lessons/.
Part III: this part has progressed well and according to the original plan. The result are two completed working papers, "Saving Behavior Across the Wealth Distribution: The Importance of Capital Gains" http://benjaminmoll.com/SBWD/ and "Asset-Price Redistribution" http://benjaminmoll.com/APR/ already mentioned in Part I. The former is currently being revised for publication in the journal “Review of Economic Studies.” The latter will be sent to an academic journal soon.
New methods have been introduced to study the dynamics of wealth inequality, the welfare effect of asset-price changes, and the effect of behavioral frictions on consumption-saving decisions. These all pushed the state of the art in the study of the "distributional macroeconomics" literature. Until the end of the project, I will continue to pursue many of these lines of research as well as taking some logical next steps, for example to study the optimal redistributive taxation of capital gains. I also plan on devoting myself to pulling together the fruits of my research and those of many others in a textbook about "Distributional Macroeconomics" at the graduate student (PhD) level.