Today, a number of central banks have held conferences on the topic, including the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Bank for International Settlement. The issue is emerging, in a post-COVID world, as a leading topic of economic research. Moreover, the recent cost-induced inflation and the consequent interest rate increases by the major central banks have raised concerns of its impact on unemployment and income inequality.

Against this background, the Monetary Policy and Income Distribution: an empirical investigation into the Pasinetti Index workshop aims to focus on the empirical evidence of the distributional impacts of monetary policy, and more specifically on the so-called Pasinetti Index. Developed by Canadian economists Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, of the University of Ottawa, this Index measures the functional distribution of income between rentiers (bond holders) and workers. The workshop will bring together a number of scholars, including a number of young scholars, that are currently working on the empirical estimation of this index. The overall aim of the workshop is to contribute to the measurement of the distributional impacts of monetary policy, to the development of more sophisticated mathematical models and to foster the policy debate over interest rates and income distribution.