IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/syd/wpaper/2019-19.html

The Role of Search Frictions in the Long-Run Relationship Between Inflation and Capital

Author

Listed:
  • Gomis-Porqueras, Pedro
  • Huangfu, Stella
  • Sun, Hongfei

Abstract

This paper explores the long-run relationships among inflation, capital accumulation and unemployment. We find that in the U.S. data, inflation and the capital to output ratio are positively correlated, while in a cross-section of 49 countries, a non-monotonic relationship exists between inflation and the investment to output ratio. To reconcile these empirical findings, we propose a general equilibrium framework with frictions in both labor and goods markets. This framework allows us to highlight the following two channels through which monetary policy affects capital accumulation: extensive and intensive margins. Due to the opposing effects on these two margins, our model predicts that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between inflation and capital in the long run. The nonlinearity identified by our model strongly contrasts previous findings suggesting either a positive or a negative correlation between money and capital. Our work provides novel insight into a classical issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Gomis-Porqueras, Pedro & Huangfu, Stella & Sun, Hongfei, 2019. "The Role of Search Frictions in the Long-Run Relationship Between Inflation and Capital," Working Papers 2019-19, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2019-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ-wpseries.com/2019/201919.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Prescott, Edward C., 1986. "Theory ahead of business-cycle measurement," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 11-44, January.
    2. Stockman, Alan C., 1981. "Anticipated inflation and the capital stock in a cash in-advance economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 387-393.
    3. Marcus Hagedorn & Iourii Manovskii, 2008. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1692-1706, September.
    4. Lucas, Robert E., 1981. "Discussion of : Stanley Fischer, "towards an understanding of the costs of inflation: II"," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 43-52, January.
    5. Haug, Alfred A. & King, Ian, 2014. "In the long run, US unemployment follows inflation like a faithful dog," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 42-52.
    6. Steven J. Davis & R. Jason Faberman & John Haltiwanger, 2006. "The Flow Approach to Labor Markets: New Data Sources and Micro-Macro Links," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 3-26, Summer.
    7. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    8. Gomis-Porqueras, Pedro & Julien, Benoît & Wang, Chengsi, 2013. "Optimal Monetary And Fiscal Policies In A Search-Theoretic Model Of Money And Unemployment," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 1330-1354, September.
    9. Lioui, Abraham & Poncet, Patrice, 2008. "Monetary non-neutrality in the Sidrauski model under uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 22-26, July.
    10. Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau & Lu Zhang & Lars-Alexander Kuehn, 2018. "Endogenous Disasters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(8), pages 2212-2245, August.
    11. 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.
    12. Kalai, Ehud, 1977. "Proportional Solutions to Bargaining Situations: Interpersonal Utility Comparisons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(7), pages 1623-1630, October.
    13. Ireland, Peter N, 1994. "Money and Growth: An Alternative Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 47-65, March.
    14. Fischer, Stanley, 1993. "The role of macroeconomic factors in growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 485-512, December.
    15. Rapach, David E, 2003. "International Evidence on the Long-Run Impact of Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(1), pages 23-48, February.
    16. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    17. Ahmed, Shaghil & Rogers, John H., 2000. "Inflation and the great ratios: Long term evidence from the U.S," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 3-35, February.
    18. Andolfatto, David, 1996. "Business Cycles and Labor-Market Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 112-132, March.
    19. Faig, Miquel & Jerez, Belen, 2005. "A theory of commerce," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 60-99, May.
    20. Dale T. Mortensen & Christopher A. Pissarides, 1994. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 397-415.
    21. Rapach, David E & Wohar, Mark E, 2005. "Regime Changes in International Real Interest Rates: Are They a Monetary Phenomenon?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 887-906, October.
    22. Gomme, Paul & Rupert, Peter, 2007. "Theory, measurement and calibration of macroeconomic models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 460-497, March.
    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. Gomis-Porqueras, Pedro & Huangfu, Stella & Sun, Hongfei, 2020. "The role of search frictions in the long-run relationships between inflation, unemployment and capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    2. Aruoba, S. Boragan & Waller, Christopher J. & Wright, Randall, 2011. "Money and capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 98-116, March.
    3. Max Gillman & Michal Kejak, 2011. "Inflation, Investment and Growth: a Money and Banking Approach," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 78(310), pages 260-282, April.
    4. S. Boragan Aruoba & Christopher J. Waller & Randall Wright, 2009. "Money and capital: a quantitative analysis," Working Papers 2009-031, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    5. Dong, Mei & Huangfu, Stella, 2021. "Unemployment and Imperfections in Labour and Credit Markets," Working Papers 2021-08, University of Sydney, School of Economics, revised Dec 2021.
    6. Dong, Mei & Huangfu, Stella & Sun, Hongfei & Zhou, Chenggang, 2021. "A macroeconomic theory of banking oligopoly," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    7. Morten O. Ravn & Saverio Simonelli, 2007. "Labor Market Dynamics and the Business Cycle: Structural Evidence for the United States," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(4), pages 743-777, December.
    8. Veracierto, Marcelo, 2008. "On the cyclical behavior of employment, unemployment and labor force participation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 1143-1157, September.
    9. Mohammed Ait Lahcen & Garth Baughman & Hugo van Buggenum, 2023. "Racial Unemployment Gaps and the Disparate Impact of the Inflation Tax," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 073, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Zachary Bethune & Guillaume Rocheteau & Peter Rupert, 2015. "Aggregate Unemployment and Household Unsecured Debt," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(1), pages 77-100, January.
    11. Ait Lahcen, Mohammed & Baughman, Garth & Rabinovich, Stanislav & van Buggenum, Hugo, 2022. "Nonlinear unemployment effects of the inflation tax," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    12. Morten O. Ravn, 2008. "The Consumption-Tightness Puzzle," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2006, pages 9-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Mikhail Simutin & JessieJiaxu Wang & Lars Kuehn, 2014. "A Labor Capital Asset Pricing Model," 2014 Meeting Papers 695, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Rodrigo Suescún M., 1995. "Growth, Welfare Costs and Aggregate Fluctuations in Economies with Monetary Taxation," Borradores de Economia 036, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    15. Alejandro Justiniano & Claudio Michelacci, 2011. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies in the US and Europe," NBER Working Papers 17429, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Antonella Trigari, 2004. "Labour Market Search, Wage Bargaining and Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 268, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    17. Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Wasmer, Etienne, 2015. "Macroeconomic dynamics in a model of goods, labor, and credit market frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 97-113.
    18. Sergio Rebelo, 2005. "Real Business Cycle Models: Past, Present, and Future," NBER Working Papers 11401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Gabrovski, Miroslav & Geromichalos, Athanasios & Herrenbrueck, Lucas & Kospentaris, Ioannis & Lee, Sukjoon, 2025. "The real effects of financial disruptions in a monetary economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    20. Almut Balleer, 2012. "New evidence, old puzzles: Technology shocks and labor market dynamics," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(3), pages 363-392, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:syd:wpaper:2019-19. 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: Vanessa Holcombe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deusyau.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.