Wealth Effects

Abstract

The recent global financial crisis, triggered by a decline in housing prices, has drawn attention to a controversial issue: the importance of 'wealth effects' in macroeconomics. This chapter explores this debate by analysing the effects of changes in prices of financial and real assets in an explicit intertemporal general equilibrium framework. It describes a multi-period model in which the value of a stock of wealth is the present value of the income stream that flows from it. Hence, the income effect of a static theory becomes the wealth effect of intertemporal economics. In addition, the chapter looks at some well-known debates such as the 'Patinkin Real Balance Effect' (RBE) and the 'Pigou effect' and discusses the liquidity trap, RBE in the overlapping generations model with money and capital, RBE in the representative agent model, bonds and capital goods, and housing wealth. © Oxford University Press 2011. All rights reserved.