FEDS Paper: Household Debt, the Labor Share, and Earnings Inequality
Mark Robinson, Pedro Silos, and Diego VilánWe show that the secular decline in real interest rates in the United States, which began in the early 1980s and persisted for nearly four decades, reduced the labor’s share of output and the unemployment rate, and increased earnings inequality. We establish this link using a model of frictional labor markets, estimated from household-level data, in which unemployment risk is only partially insurable.