Monetary Policy, Regional Inequality, Compensation of employees, Local Projections

This paper contributes to studying the impacts of monetary policy on labour income inequality in the euro area using subnational regional data on compensation per employee. The dataset covers  932 NUTS3 regions from 16 countries over the period 2000 – 2022 at a yearly frequency. Using sub-sample analysis combined with local projections, the results show that monetary policy rate changes have heterogeneous effects on the growth of real compensation per employee (deflated by the GDP deflator) at both the bottom and upper ends of the regional distribution within individual countries. From the whole euro area perspective, monetary policy tightening has a heterogeneous effect on labour incomes between regions - in times of monetary policy easing, shortening the gap between average low- and high-income regions.