Monetary policy and inequality under labor market frictions and capital-skill complementarity

We provide a new channel through which monetary policy has distributional consequences at business cycle frequencies. We show that an unexpected monetary easing increases labor income inequality between high-skilled and less-skilled workers. To rationalize these f indings, we build a New Keynesian DSGE model with asymmetric search-and-matching (SAM) frictions and capital-skill complementarity (CSC) in production. We show that CSC on its own introduces a dynamic demand amplification mechanism: the increase in high-skilled employment after a monetary expansion makes complementary capital more productive, encouraging a further rise in investment demand and creating a multiplier effect. SAM asymmetries magnify this channel.We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the EUI (research grant IE-54) and the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grant ECO2016-78652)