What is the Relationship Between Regional Inequality and Financial Instability?

Abstract information

Income inequality has increased greatly in both the United States and Europe since the 1970s. In this video, YULIYAN MITKOV explores the relationship between income inequality in specific regions of the U.S. and financial instability. Relying on U.S. Census Bureau data on income in specific Meropolitan Statistical Areas (M.S.As), Mitkov employs theoretical and statistical modeling to analyze this relationship. Mitkov finds that regions with high income inequality tend to have more failed banks. The research also explores why particular banks take on greater risk and looks to explore how the regulator might best intervene in situations where financial instability threatens.

DOI:

Researcher

Yuliyan Mitkov is an Assistant Professor in the University of Bonn’s Institute for Finance and Statistics. He completed his PhD at Rutgers University in 2017. Mitkov’s main research interests include banking, financial economics and corporate finance. Among the awards that Mitkov has received have been the Sidney Brown Prize in Economics (2014) and the Bevier Fellowship (2016-17).

Institution information

University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

Bonn is one of the large universities in Germany, with around 36,000 students, 550 professors, 6,500 other staff staff. It offers a wide disciplinary spectrum comprising some 200 different degree programmes, from Agricultural Science to Tibetan Studies. This diversity is what characterizes Bonn as a full-range university with a strong international orientation. In many international university rankings Bonn is placed among the 100 best universities in the world.Its academic and research profile features internationally renowned specializations in the fields of Mathematics, Physics/Astronomy, Economics, Chemistry, Pharma Research, Biosciences, Genetic Medicine, Neurosciences and Philosophy/Ethics. Other disciplines, such as Geography and Law, are of outstanding importance within the German research scene. The Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn is rooted in a long tradition going back almost 200 years. It was founded in 1818 by Friedrich-Wilhelm III, the Prussian king whose name it bears. Imbued with the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt, the university quickly joined the circle of Germany's most distinguished universities and became a major pole of attraction for leading scholars as well as students.The list of famous professors ranges from the astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander (1799-1875), through the chemist August Kekulé von Stradonitz (1829–1896) and political economist Josef Schumpeter (1883–1950) to the philologist Ernst Robert Curtius (1886–1956) and the theologists Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Joseph Ratzinger (born 1927), now Pope Benedict XVI. Bonn's best-known students include Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Konrad Adenauer. The university is proud of a long list of award-winning scientists and scholars, with about twenty Leibniz Prize winners and around thirty ERC grantees. In the last three decades two professors have received the Nobel Prize: Wolfgang Paul (for Physics, 1989) and Reinhard Selten (for Economics, 1994). (Source: University of Bonn)

University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

Original Publication

Unequal and Unstable: Income Inequality and Bank Risk

Yuliyan Mitkov

,

Ulrich Schüwer

Published in 2020