IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocawp/07-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Liquidity, Redistribution, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Chiu
  • Miguel Molico

Abstract

This paper studies the long run welfare costs of inflation in a micro-founded model with trading frictions and costly liquidity management. Agents face uninsurable idiosyncratic uncertainty regarding trading opportunities in a decentralized goods market and must pay a fixed cost to rebalance their liquidity holdings in a centralized liquidity market. By endogenizing the participation decision in the liquidity market, this model endogenizes the responses of velocity, output, the degree of market segmentation, as well as the distribution of money. We find that, 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 income for the U.S. economy and 0.20% of income for the Canadian economy. Furthermore, the welfare cost is generally non-linear in the rate of inflation, depending on the endogenous responses of the liquidity market participation to inflation and liquidity management costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Chiu & Miguel Molico, 2007. "Liquidity, Redistribution, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation," Staff Working Papers 07-39, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:07-39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wp07-39.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. 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.
    5. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2009. "Financial Innovation and the Transactions Demand for Cash," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 363-402, March.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Jonathan Chiu & Miguel Molico, 2011. "Uncertainty, Inflation, and Welfare," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 487-512, October.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Julia K. Thomas & Aubhik Khan, 2005. "Inflation and Interest Rates with Endogenous Market Segmentation," 2005 Meeting Papers 170, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    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. 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. Huber, Samuel & Kim, Jaehong, 2020. "An overlapping generations model for monetary policy analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    5. Yi Wen, 2009. "When does heterogeneity matter?," Working Papers 2009-024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    6. 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.
    7. Williamson, Stephen D., 2008. "Monetary policy and distribution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 1038-1053, September.
    8. Ragot, Xavier, 2014. "The case for a financial approach to money demand," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 94-107.
    9. 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.
    10. Herrenbrueck, Lucas, 2014. "Quantitative Easing and the Liquidity Channel of Monetary Policy," MPRA Paper 70686, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Apr 2016.
    11. Stephen D. Williamson & Randall Wright, 2010. "New monetarist economics: methods," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(May), pages 265-302.
    12. Herrenbrueck, Lucas, 2019. "Frictional asset markets and the liquidity channel of monetary policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 82-120.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    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. Lee, Manjong, 2013. "Coexistence and welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 23-32.
    17. 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.
    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. 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.
    20. Zeno Enders, 2020. "Heterogeneous Consumers, Segmented Asset Markets and the Real Effects of Monetary Policy," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(628), pages 1031-1056.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation: costs and benefits;

    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

    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:bca:bocawp:07-39. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.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.