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Keywords:inequality OR Inequality 

Working Paper
Inequality in the Welfare Costs of Disinflation

We use an incomplete markets economy to quantify the distribution of welfare gains and losses of the US “Volcker” disinflation. In the long run households prefer low inflation, but disinflation requires a transition period and a redistribution from net nominal borrowers to net nominal savers. Welfare costs may be significant for households with nominal liabilities. When calibrated to match the micro and macro moments of the early 1980s high-inflation environment and the actual changes in the nominal interest rate and inflation during the Volcker disinflation, nearly 60 percent of all ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-021

Discussion Paper
Why Cash Transfers Are Good Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an exceptionally large and negative impact on economic activity around the world. We show that cash transfers can be a useful policy tool during a pandemic. Cash transfers mitigate consumption inequality induced by the pandemic and provide incentives to individuals who are most negatively affected by lockdown policies to adhere to them.
Policy Hub , Paper 2020-4

Working Paper
The Politics of Flat Taxes

We study the determination of flat tax systems using a workhorse macroeconomic model of inequality. Our first result is that, despite the multidimensional policy space, equilibrium policies are typically unique (up to a fine grid numerical approximation). The majority voting outcome features (i) zero labor income taxation, (ii) simultaneous use of capital income and consumption taxation, and (iii) generally low transfers. We discuss the role of three factors?the initial heterogeneity in sources of income, the mobility of income and wealth, and the forward-looking aspect of voting?in ...
Working Papers , Paper 14-42R

Report
Heterogeneous Agent Trade

This paper studies the implications of household heterogeneity for trade. I develop a model where household heterogeneity is induced via incomplete markets and results in heterogeneous price elasticities. Conditional on exposure to trade, heterogeneous price elasticities imply that different households value price changes differently, and thus rich and poor households experience different gains from trade. I calibrate the model to match bilateral trade flows and micro-facts about household-level expenditure patterns and elasticities. I find gains from trade that are pro-poor and that the ...
Staff Report , Paper 653

Working Paper
The Macroeconomic Consequences of Early Childhood Development Policies

To study long-run large-scale early childhood policies, this paper incorporates early childhood investments into a standard general-equilibrium (GE) heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model. After estimating it using US data, we show that an RCT evaluation of a short-run small-scale early childhood program in the model predicts effects on children's education and income that are similar to the empirical evidence. A long-run large-scale program, however, yields twice as large welfare gains, even after considering GE and taxation effects. Key to this difference is that investing in a ...
Working Papers , Paper 2018-29

Working Paper
Luxuries, Necessities, and the Allocation of Time

Households enjoy utility from activities that require a combination of time and goods. We classify activities into two types: luxuries and necessities. Luxuries (necessities) are activities for which time and expenditure shares rise (decline) with income. We develop and estimate a model with nonhomothetic preferences and find that time and goods are substitutable in producing activities. Activities are also substitutable among themselves. Hence, wage and price changes cause large reallocations of time and expenditures across activities. This effect is quantitatively important for welfare ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2021-28

Working Paper
How Important Is Health Inequality for Lifetime Earnings Inequality?

Using a dynamic panel approach, we provide empirical evidence that negative health shocks reduce earnings. The effect is primarily driven by the participation margin and is concentrated in less educated individuals and those with poor health. We build a dynamic, general equilibrium, life cycle model that is consistent with these findings. In the model, individuals whose health is risky and heterogeneous choose to either work, or not work and apply for social security disability insurance (SSDI). Health affects individuals’ productivity, SSDI access, disutility from work, mortality, and ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2021-1

Discussion Paper
How Have Racial and Ethnic Earnings Gaps Changed after COVID-19?

Racial and ethnic earnings disparities have been salient features of the U.S. economy for decades. Between the pandemic-driven recession in 2020 and the rising inflation since 2021, workers’ real and nominal earnings have seen rapid change. To get a sense of how recent economic conditions have affected earnings disparities, we examine real and nominal weekly earnings trends for Asian, Black, Hispanic, and white workers. We find that average real weekly earnings have been declining in the past year, but less so for Black and Hispanic workers than for white and Asian workers. Black and ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20221020a

Working Paper
The Pathway to Enrolling in a High-Performance High School: Understanding Barriers to Access

In 2017, Chicago Public Schools adopted an online universal application system for all high schools with the hope of providing more equitable access to high-performance schools. Despite the new system, Black students and students living in low-socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods remained less likely than their peers to enroll in a high-performance high school. In this paper, we characterize various constraints that students and families may face in enrolling in a high-performance high school including eligibility to programs based on prior academic achievement, distance from ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2020-32

Working Paper
Majority Voting: A Quantitative Investigation

We study the tax systems that arise in a once-and-for-all majority voting equilibrium embedded within a macroeconomic model of inequality. We find that majority voting delivers (i) a small set of outcomes, (ii) zero labor income taxation, and (iii) nearly zero transfers. We find that majority voting, contrary to the literature developed in models without idiosyncratic risk, is quite powerful at restricting outcomes; however, it also delivers predictions inconsistent with observed tax systems.
Working Papers (Old Series) , Paper 1442

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Chakrabarti, Rajashri 21 items

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