Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

On the welfare cost of inflation

Contents:

Author Info

  • Robert E. Lucas, Jr.

Abstract

Estimates are provided for the social cost of inflation in the U.S. economy. The estimated cost, expressed as a fraction of income, is proportional to the square root of the nominal interest rate. This approximation assigns much higher costs to low rates of inflation than does the familiar welfare triangle formula. ; These estimates are rationalized using Sidrauski's model, in which real balances yield utility, and also using the McCallum-Goodfriend model, in which real balances and time are combined via a transactions technology to support a given spending flow. The latter formulation is related to the Baumol and Miller-Orr inventory-theoretic models of money demand. Second-best modifications to take into account fiscal complications are also considered, but turn out to be quantitatively minor.

Download Info

To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in its series Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory with number 94-07.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 1994
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published in Conference on Monetary Policy in a Low Inflation Regime
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfap:94-07

Contact details of provider:
Postal: P.O. Box 7702, San Francisco, CA 94120-7702
Phone: (415) 974-2000
Fax: (415) 974-3333
Email:
Web page: http://www.frbsf.org/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Email:
Web: http://www.frbsf.org/popups/fiporder.html

Related research

Keywords: Inflation (Finance) ; Monetary policy;

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:
  1. Advanced Monetary Theory and Policy (ECON 447)

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedfap:94-07

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Diane Rosenberger).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.