Heterogeneous effects of monetary tightening in response to energy price shocks

This article analyses how monetary policy shapes the aggregate and distributional effects of an energy price shock. Based on the observed heterogeneity in consumption exposures to energy and household wealth, we build a quantitative small open-economy Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model that matches salient features of the euro area data. The model incorporates energy as both a consumption good for households with non-homothetic preferences as well as a factor input into production with input complementarities. Independently of policy, energy price shocks always reduce aggregate consumption. Households with little wealth are more adversely affected through both a decline in labour income as well as negative direct price effects. Active policy responses raising rates in response to inflation amplify aggregate outcomes through a reduction in aggregate demand, but speed up the recovery by enabling households to rebuild wealth through higher returns on savings. However, low-wealth households are also adversely affected by having less savings from which to rebuild wealth and instead lose out due to further declining labour income.