INDEBTED DEMAND

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mian, Atif; Straub, Ludwig; Sufi, Amir
• 署名单位: Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjab007
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 2243-2307
• 关键词: monetary-policy; housing finance; wealth distribution; liquidity trap; UNITED-STATES; credit booms; INEQUALITY; debt; crises; RISK

摘要

We propose a theory of indebted demand, capturing the idea that large debt burdens lower aggregate demand, and thus the natural rate of interest. At the core of the theory is the simple yet underappreciated observation that borrowers and savers differ in their marginal propensities to save out of permanent income. Embedding this insight in a two-agent perpetual-youth model, we find that recent trends in income inequality and financial deregulation lead to indebted household demand, pushing down the natural rate of interest. Moreover, popular expansionary policies-such as accommodative monetary policy-generate a debt-financed short-run boom at the expense of indebted demand in the future. When demand is sufficiently indebted, the economy gets stuck in a debt-driven liquidity trap, or debt trap. Escaping a debt trap requires consideration of less conventional macroeconomic policies, such as those focused on redistribution or those reducing the structural sources of high inequality.