This paper evaluates the welfare gain from achieving price stability and compares it to the cost of the transition. In calculating the gain from price stability, the paper emphasizes the distortions caused by the interaction of inflation and capital income taxes. Because inflation exacerbates the tax distortions that would exist even with price stability, the annual deadweight loss of a two percent inflation rate is a surprisingly large one percent of GDP. Since the real gain from shifting to price stability grows in perpetuity at the rate of growth of GDP, its present value is a substantial multiple of this annual gain. Discounting the annual gains at the rate that investors require for risky equity investments (i.e., at the 5.1 percent real net-of-tax rate of return on the Standard and Poors portfolio of equities from 1970 to 1994) implies a present value gain equal to more than 35 percent of the initial level of GDP. Since the estimated cost of shifting from two percent inflation to price stability is about five percent of GDP, the gain substantially outweighs the cost of transition.
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5469.
Length: Date of creation: Aug 1997 Date of revision: Publication status: published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5469
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
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