IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v57y2010i4p428-438.html

Liquidity, redistribution, and the welfare cost of inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Chiu, Jonathan
  • Molico, Miguel

Abstract

The long-run welfare costs of inflation are studied in a micro-founded model with trading frictions and costly liquidity management. By modelling the liquidity management decision, the model endogenizes the responses of velocity, output, the degree of market segmentation, and the distribution of money. Compared to the traditional estimates based on a representative agent model, the welfare costs of inflation are significantly smaller due to distributional effects of inflation. The welfare cost of increasing inflation from 0% to 10% is 0.62% of consumption for the US economy. Furthermore, the welfare cost is generally non-linear in the inflation rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Chiu, Jonathan & Molico, Miguel, 2010. "Liquidity, redistribution, and the welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 428-438, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:57:y:2010:i:4:p:428-438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3932(10)00036-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aleksander Berentsen & Gabriele Camera & C hristopher W aller, 2005. "The Distribution Of Money Balances And The Nonneutrality Of Money," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(2), pages 465-487, May.
    2. Stephen D. Williamson, 2006. "Search, Limited Participation, And Monetary Policy ," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(1), pages 107-128, February.
    3. Levine, David K., 1991. "Asset trading mechanisms and expansionary policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 148-164, June.
    4. Julia K. Thomas & Aubhik Khan, 2005. "Inflation and Interest Rates with Endogenous Market Segmentation," 2005 Meeting Papers 170, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Orazio P. Attanasio & Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2002. "The Demand for Money, Financial Innovation, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation: An Analysis with Household Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 317-351, April.
    6. Miguel Molico, 2006. "The Distribution Of Money And Prices In Search Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(3), pages 701-722, August.
    7. Ricardo Lagos & Randall Wright, 2005. "A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 463-484, June.
    8. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2009. "Financial Innovation and the Transactions Demand for Cash," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 363-402, March.
    9. Fernando Alvarez & Andrew Atkeson & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2002. "Money, Interest Rates, and Exchange Rates with Endogenously Segmented Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 73-112, February.
    10. Deviatov Alexei & Wallace Neil, 2001. "Another Example in which Lump-sum Money Creation is Beneficial," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-22, February.
    11. Jonathan Chiu & Miguel Molico, 2011. "Uncertainty, Inflation, and Welfare," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 487-512, October.
    12. Ben Craig & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2008. "Inflation and Welfare: A Search Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(1), pages 89-119, February.
    13. E.S. Andersen, 2007. "Innovation and Demand," Chapters, in: Horst Hanusch & Andreas Pyka (ed.), Elgar Companion to Neo-Schumpeterian Economics, chapter 47, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Huberto M. Ennis, 2009. "Avoiding The Inflation Tax," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 607-625, May.
    15. Robert E. Lucas, 2001. "Inflation and Welfare," International Economic Association Series, in: Axel Leijonhufvud (ed.), Monetary Theory as a Basis for Monetary Policy, chapter 4, pages 96-142, Palgrave Macmillan.
    16. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1982. "Inflation and Welfare in the Steady State," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(3), pages 561-577, June.
    17. Chiu, Jonathan, 2014. "Endogenously Segmented Asset Market In An Inventory-Theoretic Model Of Money Demand," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 438-472, March.
    18. Dotsey, Michael & Ireland, Peter, 1996. "The welfare cost of inflation in general equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 29-47, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan Chiu & Miguel Molico, 2011. "Uncertainty, Inflation, and Welfare," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 487-512, October.
    2. Miguel Molico & Yahong Zhang, 2006. "Monetary Policy and the Distribution of Money and Capital," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 136, Society for Computational Economics.
    3. Yi Wen, 2009. "When does heterogeneity matter?," Working Papers 2009-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    4. Boel, Paola, 2018. "The redistributive effects of inflation and the shape of money demand," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 208-219.
    5. Huberto M. Ennis, 2009. "Avoiding The Inflation Tax," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 607-625, May.
    6. Huber, Samuel & Kim, Jaehong, 2020. "An overlapping generations model for monetary policy analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    7. Herrenbrueck, Lucas, 2014. "Quantitative Easing and the Liquidity Channel of Monetary Policy," MPRA Paper 70686, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Apr 2016.
    8. Aleksander Berentsen & Samuel Huber & Alessandro Marchesiani, 2015. "Financial Innovations, Money Demand, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(S2), pages 223-261, June.
    9. Williamson, Stephen & Wright, Randall, 2010. "New Monetarist Economics: Models," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 25-96, Elsevier.
    10. Lee, Manjong, 2013. "Coexistence and welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 23-32.
    11. Herrenbrueck, Lucas, 2019. "Frictional asset markets and the liquidity channel of monetary policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 82-120.
    12. Hyung Sun Choi, 2011. "Monetary Policy And Endowment Risk In A Limited Participation Model," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(1), pages 89-93, January.
    13. Lucy Qian Liu & Liang Wang & Randall Wright, 2009. "“On the ‘Hot Potato Effect’ of Inflation: Intensive versus Extensive Marginsâ€," PIER Working Paper Archive 09-040, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    14. Stephen D. Williamson & Randall Wright, 2010. "New monetarist economics: methods," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(May), pages 265-302.
    15. Dressler, Scott, 2016. "A long-run, short-run, and politico-economic analysis of the welfare costs of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB), pages 255-269.
    16. Mahmoudi, Babak, 2013. "Open-Market Operations, Asset Distributions, and Endogenous Market Segmentation," MPRA Paper 50089, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Boel, Paola & Camera, Gabriele, 2009. "Financial sophistication and the distribution of the welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(7), pages 968-978, October.
    18. Menzio, Guido & Shi, Shouyong & Sun, Hongfei, 2013. "A monetary theory with non-degenerate distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2266-2312.
    19. Zhu, Tao, 2008. "An overlapping-generations model with search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 318-331, September.
    20. Mariana Rojas Breu, 2013. "The Welfare Effect Of Access To Credit," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 235-247, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:57:y:2010:i:4:p:428-438. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.