Wealth inequality, preference heterogeneity and macroeconomic volatility in<br />two-sector economies

International audienceWeexplore the link between wealth inequality, preference heterogeneity and macroeconomicvolatility in a two-sector neoclassical growth model. First we prove that, if agents havehomogeneous preferences, when the absolute risk tolerance is a strictly convex (concave) function, sufficiently high (low) levels of wealthinequalitymay lead to endogenous fluctuations in the neighborhood of the steady state. Second, we consider the effects of preference heterogeneity whenagents are homogeneous with respect to their wealth. We show that when the utility functionbelongs to the HARA class, sufficiently high levels of preference heterogeneitymay lead to endogenous fluctuations in the neighborhood of the steady state if theelasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is greater than one