IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joecth/v24y2004i4p907-932.html

Money, price dispersion and welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Brian Peterson

  • Shouyong Shi

Abstract

We introduce heterogeneous preferences into a tractable model of monetary search to generate price dispersion, and then examine the effects of money growth on price dispersion and welfare. With buyers’ search intensity fixed, we find that money growth increases the range of (real) prices and lowers welfare as agents shift more of their consumption to less desirable goods. When buyers’ search intensity is endogenous, multiple equilibria are possible. In the equilibrium with the highest welfare level, money growth reduces welfare and increases the range of prices, while having ambiguous effects on search intensity. However, there can be a welfare-inferior equilibrium in which an increase in money growth increases search intensity, increases welfare, and reduces the range of prices. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2004

Suggested Citation

  • Brian Peterson & Shouyong Shi, 2004. "Money, price dispersion and welfare," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 24(4), pages 907-932, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:24:y:2004:i:4:p:907-932
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-003-0465-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00199-003-0465-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00199-003-0465-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Richard Ashley & Haichun Ye, 2012. "On the Granger causality between median inflation and price dispersion," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(32), pages 4221-4238, November.
    2. Shouyong Shi, 2006. "Viewpoint: A microfoundation of monetary economics," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 39(3), pages 643-688, August.
    3. 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.
    4. Becker, Sascha S. & Nautz, Dieter, 2012. "Inflation, price dispersion and market integration through the lens of a monetary search model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 624-634.
    5. Caglayan, Mustafa & Filiztekin, Alpay & Rauh, Michael T., 2008. "Inflation, price dispersion, and market structure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1187-1208, October.
    6. Hiranya K. Nath & Jayanta Sarkar, 2019. "Inflation and relative price variability: new evidence from survey-based measures of inflation expectations in Australia," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 2001-2024, June.
    7. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2010-058 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Ba M. Chu & Kim Huynh & David T. Jacho-Chávez & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2018. "On the Evolution of the United Kingdom Price Distributions," Staff Working Papers 18-25, Bank of Canada.
    9. Rodrigo Cerda & Alvaro Silva & Rolf Lüders, 2021. "Price controls, hyperinflation, and the inflation–relative price variability relationship," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(4), pages 1725-1748, October.
    10. Ahiabu, Stephen, 2006. "Inflation and the underground economy," MPRA Paper 763, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2006.
    11. Allen Head & Alok Kumar & Beverly Lapham, 2010. "Market Power, Price Adjustment, And Inflation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 51(1), pages 73-98, February.
    12. Richard Dutu & Benoit Julien & Ian King, 2012. "On the Welfare Gains of Price Dispersion," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(5), pages 757-786, August.
    13. Janet Hua Jiang & Enchuan Shao, 2020. "The Cash Paradox," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 36, pages 177-197, April.
    14. Branch, William & McGough, Bruce, 2016. "Heterogeneous beliefs and trading inefficiencies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 786-818.
    15. Shouyong Shi, 2006. "A Microfoundation of Monetary Economics," Working Papers tecipa-211, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - 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:spr:joecth:v:24:y:2004:i:4:p:907-932. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.