This paper evaluates the role of redistribution in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy to consumption. Three channels affect aggregate spending when winners and losers have different marginal propensities to consume: an earnings heterogeneity channel from unequal income gains, a Fisher channel from unexpected inflation, and an interest rate exposure channel from real interest rate changes. Sufficient statistics from Italian and US data suggest that all three channels are likely to amplify the effects of monetary policy. (JEL E21, E31, E43, E52)

provided outstanding research assistance, and the Macro-Financial Modeling Group provided generous financial support. All remaining errors are my own. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Werning, and Christian Wolf for helpful comments and suggestions, as well as Andreas Fagereng, Martin Holm and Gisle Natvik for generously providing us with empirical estimates of iMPCs. Remaining errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

We explore the transmission mechanism of income inequality to output. In the short run, higher inequality reduces output because marginal propensities to consume are negatively correlated with incomes, but this effect is quantitatively small in the data and in our model. In the long run, the output effects of income inequality are small if inequality is caused by rising dispersion in individual fixed effects, but can be large if it is the manifestation of higher individual income risk. We formalize the connection between partial and general equilibrium effects, and show that the two are closely related under standard assumptions about the behavior of monetary policy. Our economy features a depressed long-run real interest rate, allowing us to quantify the potential contribution of income inequality to secular stagnation.

This paper argues that the debt forgiveness provided by the U.S. consumer bankruptcy system helped stabilize employment levels during the Great Recession. We document that over this period, states with more generous bankruptcy exemptions had significantly smaller declines in non-tradable employment and larger increases in unsecured debt write-downs compared to states with less generous exemptions. We interpret these reduced form estimates as the relative effect of debt relief across states, and develop a general equilibrium model to recover the aggregate employment effect. The model yields three key results. First, substantial nominal rigidities are required to rationalize our reduced form estimates. Second, with monetary policy at the zero lower bound, traded good demand spillovers across states boosted employment everywhere. Finally, the ex-post debt forgiveness provided by the consumer bankruptcy system during the Great Recession increased aggregate employment by almost two percent.