IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ube/dpvwib/dp2508.html

The Welfare Costs of Inflation Reconsidered

Author

Listed:
  • Luca Benati, Juan-Pablo Nicolini

Abstract

Modern analysis of the welfare effects of monetary policy is based on moneyless models and therefore ignores the effect of inflation on the efficiency of transactions. A justification for this strategy is that these welfare effects are quantitatively very small, as argued by Ireland (2009). We revisit Ireland’s result using recent data for the United States and several other developed countries. Our computations are influenced by the experience of very low short-term rates observed since Ireland’s work in the countries we study. We estimate the welfare cost of a steady state nominal interest rate of 5% to be at least one order of magnitude higher than in Ireland (2009), which questions the validity of performing monetary policy evaluation in cashless models.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Benati, Juan-Pablo Nicolini, 2025. "The Welfare Costs of Inflation Reconsidered," Diskussionsschriften dp2508, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    • Handle: RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp2508
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.vwiit.ch/dp/dp2508.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Johannes Wieland, 2012. "The Optimal Inflation Rate in New Keynesian Models: Should Central Banks Raise Their Inflation Targets in Light of the Zero Lower Bound?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(4), pages 1371-1406.
    2. Michaelis, Henrike, 2022. "Going below zero - How do banks react?," Discussion Papers 33/2022, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    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. Luca Benati & Juan Pablo Nicolini, 2025. "The Welfare Costs of Inflation Reconsidered," Department of Economics Working Papers 2025_10, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    2. Gregor Bäurle & Daniel Kaufmann, 2014. "Exchange rate and price dynamics in a small open economy - the role of the zero lower bound and monetary policy regimes," Working Papers 2014-10, Swiss National Bank.
    3. Gürkaynak, Refet S. & Kısacıkoğlu, Burçin & Lee, Sang Seok, 2022. "Exchange rate and inflation under weak monetary policy: Turkey verifies theory," CFS Working Paper Series 679, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    4. Klaus Adam & Henning Weber, 2023. "Estimating the Optimal Inflation Target from Trends in Relative Prices," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 1-42, July.
    5. Gopal K. Basak & Mrinal K. Ghosh & Diganta Mukherjee, 2025. "Growth and inflation targeting by the government and the central bank: Alignment or conflict?," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 21(3), pages 289-315, September.
    6. Duffy, James A. & Mavroeidis, Sophocles & Wycherley, Sam, 2025. "Cointegration with occasionally binding constraints," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 252(PA).
    7. Zaretski, Aliaksandr, 2021. "Financial constraints, risk sharing, and optimal monetary policy," MPRA Paper 110757, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Hodula, Martin, 2025. "Does U.S. monetary policy sway global crypto investment demand?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    9. Christopher Gust & Benjamin K. Johannsen & J. David López-Salido, 2017. "Monetary Policy, Incomplete Information, and the Zero Lower Bound," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(1), pages 37-70, April.
    10. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/713kqq1pgu80lr8fn0lsuuh8lf is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Yasufumi Gemma & Takushi Kurozumi & Mototsugu Shintani, 2023. "Trend Inflation and Evolving Inflation Dynamics:A Bayesian GMM Analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 506-520, December.
    12. Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar & John B. Taylor & Inna Tsener, 2020. "A tractable framework for analyzing a class of nonstationary Markov models," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(4), pages 1289-1323, November.
    13. Lilia Maliar & John B. Taylor, 2019. "Forward Guidance: Is It Useful Away from the Lower Bound?," NBER Working Papers 26053, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Chen, Zhengyang & Valcarcel, Victor J., 2021. "Monetary transmission in money markets: The not-so-elusive missing piece of the puzzle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    15. Felipe Alves & Giovanni L. Violante, 2026. "Monetary Policy Under Okun’s Hypothesis," Staff Working Papers 26-3, Bank of Canada.
    16. Khan, Hashmat & Phaneuf, Louis & Victor, Jean Gardy, 2020. "Rules-based monetary policy and the threat of indeterminacy when trend inflation is low," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 317-333.
    17. Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato & Owen Zidar, 2016. "Who Benefits from State Corporate Tax Cuts? A Local Labor Markets Approach with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2582-2624, September.
    18. Bianchi, Francesco & Melosi, Leonardo & Rottner, Matthias, 2021. "Hitting the elusive inflation target," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 107-122.
    19. Nurlan Turdaliev, 2019. "Heterogeneity and monetary policy," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 128(2), pages 119-145, October.
    20. Lucian Briciu & Stefan Hohberger & Luca Onorante & Beatrice Pataracchia & Marco Ratto & Lukas Vogel, 2023. "The ECB Strategy Review - Implications for the Space of Monetary Policy," European Economy - Discussion Papers 193, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    21. Oikawa, Koki & Ueda, Kozo, 2018. "The optimal inflation rate under Schumpeterian growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 114-125.

    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:ube:dpvwib:dp2508. 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: Franz Koelliker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwibech.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.