IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed013/569.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Demand for Liquidity and Welfare Cost of Inflation by Cohort and Age of Households

Author

Listed:
  • Yaz Terajima

    (Bank of Canada)

  • Jose-Victor Rios-Rull

    (University of Minnesota)

  • Césaire Meh

    (Bank of Canada)

  • Shutao Cao

    (Bank of Canada)

Abstract

Cross-sectional data show that money holding differs significantly over household consumption and age. Liquidity demand for money (i.e., money holding per dollar of consumption) decreases as household consumption increases. It also increases with household age conditional on the level of consumption. Observed age differences in money holdings contain not only age-specific information but also cohort-specific one. Using a life-cycle model, this paper disentangles these two effects on money demand and quantifies welfare gains of reducing the long-run inflation rate. We dynamically calibrate the model to micro data and macroeconomic conditions over time. We find that, although a large part of the observed cross-sectional age differences in money demand can be accounted for by some age effects, cohort effects play a non-negligible part, supporting a presence of financial innovation. In addition, changing inflation has significantly different impacts across household groups due to their heterogeneity in money holding. When inflation increases from the 2009 level to 10%, we find the aggregate welfare loss in consumption to be 1.34%. These losses are accrued mostly by generations that are currently alive and less by future cohorts. Finally, poorer households lose more than their rich peers.

Suggested Citation

  • Yaz Terajima & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull & Césaire Meh & Shutao Cao, 2013. "Demand for Liquidity and Welfare Cost of Inflation by Cohort and Age of Households," 2013 Meeting Papers 569, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed013:569
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2013/paper_569.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Mendoza, Enrique G. & Razin, Assaf & Tesar, Linda L., 1994. "Effective tax rates in macroeconomics: Cross-country estimates of tax rates on factor incomes and consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 297-323, December.
    4. Ragot, Xavier, 2014. "The case for a financial approach to money demand," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 94-107.
    5. William J. Baumol, 1952. "The Transactions Demand for Cash: An Inventory Theoretic Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 66(4), pages 545-556.
    6. Burkhard Heer & Alfred Maussner & Paul D. McNelis, 2007. "The Money-Age Distribution: Empirical Facts and Limited Monetary Models," CESifo Working Paper Series 1917, CESifo.
    7. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2009. "Financial Innovation and the Transactions Demand for Cash," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 363-402, March.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Erosa, Andres & Ventura, Gustavo, 2002. "On inflation as a regressive consumption tax," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 761-795, May.
    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. Cao, Shutao & Meh, Césaire A. & Ríos-Rull, José-Víctor & Terajima, Yaz, 2021. "The welfare cost of inflation revisited: The role of financial innovation and household heterogeneity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 366-380.
    2. Ragot, Xavier, 2014. "The case for a financial approach to money demand," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 94-107.
    3. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4vm8e5vhjr99cb1ekr86bivlk0 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Wen, Yi, 2015. "Money, liquidity and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1-24.
    5. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Roberto Robatto, 2019. "Cost of Inflation in Inventory Theoretical Models," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 32, pages 206-226, April.
    6. Columba, Francesco, 2009. "Narrow money and transaction technology: New disaggregated evidence," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 312-325, July.
    7. Benchimol, Jonathan & Qureshi, Irfan, 2020. "Time-varying money demand and real balance effects," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 197-211.
    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. Pedro Teles & Harald Uhlig & João Valle e Azevedo, 2016. "Is Quantity Theory Still Alive?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(591), pages 442-464, March.
    10. Luca Benati & Juan-Pablo Nicolini, 2019. "The Welfare Costs of Inflation," Diskussionsschriften dp1911, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    11. Bernardino Adão & André C. Silva, 2021. "Government financing, inflation, and the financial sector," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(4), pages 1357-1396, June.
    12. Benjamin Pugsley & Hannah Rubinton, 2019. "Inequality in the Welfare Costs of Disinflation," Working Papers 2020-021, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 23 Sep 2021.
    13. Mehdi el Herradi & Jakob de Haan & Aurélien Leroy, 2020. "Inflation and the Income Share of the Rich: Evidence for 12 OECD Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 8203, CESifo.
    14. Yi Wen, 2009. "When does heterogeneity matter?," Working Papers 2009-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    15. Burkhard Heer & Alfred Maussner & Paul D. McNelis, 2007. "The Money-Age Distribution: Empirical Facts and Limited Monetary Models," CESifo Working Paper Series 1917, CESifo.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Lu, Chia-Hui & Chen, Been-Lon & Hsu, Mei, 2011. "The dynamic welfare cost of seignorage tax and consumption tax in a neoclassical growth model with a cash-in-advance constraint," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 247-258, June.
    19. Max Gillman & Michal Kejak, 2005. "Inflation and Balanced-Path Growth with Alternative Payment Mechanisms," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(500), pages 247-270, January.
    20. Aruoba, S. Boragan & Waller, Christopher J. & Wright, Randall, 2011. "Money and capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 98-116, March.
    21. 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.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:red:sed013:569. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    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.