On the general equilibrium costs of perfectly anticipated inflation

In monetary models where M0 has no social costs and a positive demand for cash and deposits is taken as a primitive, we show that the compensating variation in endowment is the exact general equilibrium measure of welfare costs of perfectly anticipated inflation. As a consequence, we show that a good approximation to the welfare costs of inflation is given by the area under the compensated demand for M0, a result that brings us back to Bailey (J Polit Econ 64:93–110, 1956). The estimated welfare costs of inflation are bounded at less than a quarter of a percent of the GDP for the U.S. economy.      

耐用品、投资专有冲击与货币政策福利

本文构建蕴含耐用品与非耐用品的两部门DSGE模型,研究投资专有冲击对货币政策及社会福利的影响。投资专有技术进步改进了投资转化为生产资本的效率,放大边际成本波动,增加了厂商调价动机和价格水平变动。即使耐用品价格完全灵活,最优货币政策也无法同时稳定价格和实际GDP。研究发现:(1)耐用品相对价格缺口波动率的上升虽然增加了实际GDP波动,但能够有效地降低投资专有技术对边际成本的冲击,减少价格变动的福利损失。所以两部门投资专有冲击时,央行倾向于稳定价格水平。与其相反,在单部门投资专有冲击和两部门生产技术冲击时,最优货币政策应降低耐用品相对价格缺口波动,稳定实际GDP。(2)对比三种泰勒规则:钉住非耐用品PPI、钉住加权平均PPI及钉住CPI,福利分析发现钉住非耐用品PPI最优,钉住CPI次之,钉住加权平均PPI的福利损失最大。就损失程度而言,投资专有冲击的福利损失是生产技术冲击的2倍,表明投资专有冲击加剧了最优货币政策在稳定价格与实际GDP间的权衡。     

货币政策的边界:经济波动福利成本

经济波动的福利成本研究给出了货币政策的福利边界,该领域的早期分析认为,经济波动造成的福利成本微不足道,这一结论成为新古典宏观经济学政策无效论的一个重要支撑。但随着分析技术的不断改进以及学术思想的不断拓展,尤其是增长效应、危机效应等新的福利机制不断被挖掘出来,使得我们对经济波动影响社会福利的机制有了更深入的了解,也使得早期结论受到相当的质疑。     

金融中介效率对货币政策效果的影响——基于动态随机一般均衡模型的研究

本文运用新凯恩斯框架下的DSGE模型研究金融中介效率对货币政策效果的影响,研究结果表明:(1)无论是利率规则还是数量规则,金融中介效率的提高都会弱化货币政策对产出、消费和通货膨胀的影响;(2)在利率规则下,金融中介效率提高还会平滑劳动的波动,并最终减少社会福利损失,而在数量规则下,金融中介效率提高会放大货币政策冲击造成的劳动的波动,并最终放大社会福利损失。因此,货币政策的中介目标应当由货币供应量向利率转变。     

Liquidity, redistribution, and the welfare cost of inflation

The long-run welfare costs of inflation are studied in a micro-founded model with trading frictions and costly liquidity management. By modelling the liquidity management decision, the model endogenizes the responses of velocity, output, the degree of market segmentation, and the distribution of money. 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 consumption for the US economy. Furthermore, the welfare cost is generally non-linear in the inflation rate.     

Home bias,exchange rate disconnect,and optimal exchange rate policy

This paper examines how much the central bank should adjust the interest rate in response to real exchange rate fluctuations. The paper first demonstrates, in a two-country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, that home bias in consumption is important to replicate the exchange rate volatility and exchange rate disconnect documented in the data. When home bias is high, the shock to Uncovered Interest rate Parity (UIP) can substantially drive up exchange rate volatility while leaving the volatility of real macroeconomic variables, such as GDP, almost untouched. The model predicts that the volatility of the real exchange rate relative to that of GDP increases with the extent of home bias. This relation is supported by the data. A second-order accurate solution method is employed to find the optimal operational monetary policy rule. Our model suggests that the monetary authority should not seek to vigorously stabilize exchange rate fluctuations. In particular, when the central bank does not take a strong stance against the inflation rate, exchange rate stabilization may induce substantial welfare loss. The model does not detect welfare gain from international monetary cooperation, which extends Obstfeld and Rogoff's [Obstfeld, M., Rogoff, K.,2002. Global implications of self-oriented national monetary rules, Quarterly Journal of Economics May, 503–535] findings to a DSGE model.     

A note on the integrability of partial-equilibrium measures of the welfare costs of inflation

Multidimensional measures of the welfare costs of inflation have been employed in the literature without an explicit concern of how the demand for the respective monetary assets are generated and without an investigation of the respective integrability conditions. This note establishes conditions under which such welfare measures are well defined.     

Macroprudential regulation,credit spreads and the role of monetary policy

We study the macroprudential roles of bank capital regulation and monetary policy in a borrowing cost channel model with endogenous financial frictions, driven by credit risk, bank losses and bank capital costs. These frictions induce financial accelerator mechanisms and motivate the examination of a macroprudential toolkit. Following credit shocks, countercyclical regulation is more effective than monetary policy in promoting price, financial and macroeconomic stability. For supply shocks, combining macroprudential regulation with a stronger anti-inflationary policy stance is optimal. The findings emphasize the importance of the Basel III accords in alleviating the output-inflation trade-off faced by central banks, and cast doubt on the desirability of conventional (and unconventional) Taylor rules during periods of financial distress.     

Intertemporally Dependent Preferences and the Welfare Cost of Capital Income Taxation

The welfare cost of capital income taxation is analyzed utilizing intertemporally dependent preference operationalized using a variable rate of time preference. It is shown that if households exhibit increasing marginal impatience, then the welfare cost of capital income taxation is inversely related to the elasticity of the rate of time preference with respect to consumption. Therefore, the welfare cost of capital income taxation reported using time additive preferences may not be robust. Numerical examples show that the use of time additive preferences could result in the welfare cost of capital income taxation to be overestimated by as much as 25%.     

The welfare cost of bank capital requirements

Capital requirements are the cornerstone of modern bank regulation, yet little is known about their welfare cost. This paper measures this cost and finds that it is surprisingly large. I present a simple framework, which embeds the role of liquidity creating banks in an otherwise standard general equilibrium growth model. A capital requirement limits the moral hazard on the part of banks that arises due to deposit insurance. However, this capital requirement is also costly because it reduces the ability of banks to create liquidity. The key insight is that equilibrium asset returns reveal the strength of households’ preferences for liquidity and this allows for the derivation of a simple formula for the welfare cost of capital requirements that is a function of observable variables only. Using US data, the welfare cost of current capital adequacy regulation is found to be equivalent to a permanent loss in consumption of between 0.1% and 1%.     

The Cost of Nominal Rigidity in NNS Models

We present a model with Calvo wage and price setting, capital formation, and estimated rules for government spending and monetary policy. Our model captures many aspects of U.S. data, including the volatility that has been observed in various efficiency gaps. We estimate the cost of nominal rigidity—welfare under flexible wages and prices minus welfare with nominal rigidities—to be as much as 3% of consumption each period. Since there are interest rate rules that virtually eliminate this cost, our model suggests that—contrary to Lucas's (2003) assertion—there is considerable room for improvement in demand management policy.     

Risk and adventure education

Fire, an ever present hazard in Australia, causes approximately 100 fatalities and over 3000 injuries per annum. Significant resources are allocated to mitigate the risk. In this study, we estimate the total cost of fire in Australia for 2005 at AUD$12,000 million or 1.3% of GDP. Comparable studies in the UK, USA, Canada, Denmark and New Zealand are reviewed and show that the cost in these countries ranges between 0.8 and 2% of GDP. Breaking the Australian total down into its component parts, we find that 57% relates to costs in anticipation of fire, 29% for response activities and that the remaining 14% results from the consequences of fire. This estimate shows that the investment in mitigation (86% of the total costs) is over five times the consequences (14%) and raises questions as to whether the current system adopted in Australia is economically efficient.     

On the Instability of Long‐Run Money Demand and the Welfare Cost of Inflation in the United States

We evaluate the policy implications of measuring the welfare cost of inflation accounting for instabilities in the long‐run money demand for the United States over the period 1900–2013. We extend the analysis and reassess the results reported in Lucas (2000) and Ireland (2009), also considering the recent theoretical contributions of Lucas and Nicolini (2015) and Berentsen, Huber, and Marchesiani (2015). Breaks in the long‐run money demand give rise to regime‐dependent welfare cost estimates. We find that the welfare cost is about 0.1% of annual income over 1976–2013, as compared to 0.8% over 1945–75. Overall, these values are substantially lower than those reported in the literature.     

Aggregate and welfare effects of redistribution of wealth under inflation and price-level targeting

An unanticipated rise in the price level redistributes wealth from lenders to borrowers. Its size depends on the monetary policy regime, as inflation targeting (IT) and price-level targeting (PT) have different implications for the price-level path following price-level movements. The effects of an unexpected 1% price-level increase are measured and assessed under both regimes. Overall, the redistribution of wealth and the implied aggregate and welfare effects are larger under IT than they are under PT. The youngest, the poorest, and the government gain at the expense of the rest of the population and, when the government gain is given to households as lump-sum transfers, the effects on GDP are negative and long-lasting.     

Bargaining and the value of money

Search models of monetary exchange have typically relied on Nash [1950. The bargaining problem. Econometrica 18, 155-162] bargaining, or strategic games that yield an equivalent outcome, to determine the terms of trade. By considering alternative axiomatic bargaining solutions in a search model with divisible money, we show that the properties of the bargaining solutions do matter both qualitatively and quantitatively for questions of first-degree importance in monetary economics such as: (i) the efficiency of monetary equilibrium; (ii) the optimality of the Friedman rule and (iii) the welfare cost of inflation.     

A Tale of Two Growth Engines: Interactive Effects of Monetary Policy and Intellectual Property Rights

How do intellectual property rights that determine the market power of firms influence the growth and welfare effects of monetary policy? To analyze this question, we develop a monetary hybrid endogenous growth model in which R&D and capital accumulation are both engines of long‐run economic growth. We find that monetary expansion hurts economic growth and social welfare by reducing R&D and capital accumulation. Furthermore, a larger market power of firms strengthens these growth and welfare effects of monetary policy through the R&D channel but weakens these effects through the capital‐accumulation channel. Therefore, whether the market power of firms amplifies or mitigates the welfare cost of inflation depends on the relative importance of the two growth engines. Finally, we calibrate the model using data in the United States and the Euro Area to quantitatively evaluate and compare the welfare cost of inflation in these two economies and find that the R&D channel dominates in both economies.     

Inflation and Welfare: A Search Approach

This paper uses a search model of monetary exchange to provide new insights for evaluating the welfare costs of inflation. We first show that the search model of money can rationalize the estimates of the welfare cost of inflation based on the "welfare triangle" methodology of Bailey (1956) and Lucas (2000) provided that buyers appropriate the social marginal benefit of their real balances. For other mechanisms, the measure given by the welfare triangle has to be scaled up by a factor that increases with sellers' market power. We introduce capital and endogenous participation decisions and study how the cost of inflation is affected. We provide calibrated examples in which a deviation from the Friedman rule is optimal.     

An international analysis of the economic cost for countries located in crisis zones

We study the impact on a country’s economy of sharing a direct land border with a country experiencing conflict. Through analyzing sixty-three major episodes of regional instability during the period between 1990 and 2016 by using panel data methods applied to unrestricted error correction model, the opportunity cost of such regional conflict is examined. The resulting estimates of GDP loss are most profound for countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Regional turmoil resulting from conflict has been found to have significantly reduced GDP growth in Angola, China, Kuwait, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Tanzania, with estimates ranging from over 3% to 7% average reductions in GDP growth rate using both pooled OLS and fixed effects estimations (with an international average of 0.95% and 1.18% respectively). This considerable opportunity costs of military expenditure raise an important and challenging question to the concerned governments about the economic and social rightfulness of this expenditure and whether their people ultimately pay the price for the government decisions of increasing military spending.     

减税降费的价格和福利效应——引入成本传导率的投入产出价格模型分析

本文在增值税抵扣机制的投入产出价格模型中引入社保费和成本传导机制,并利用2017年中国投入产出表和税收数据模拟分析了不同成本传导率条件下,减税降费的价格效应和福利效应。研究表明:(1)减税降费使得各行业产品价格降低,对第三产业的价格影响最为明显。(2)成本传导率越高,则产品价格的下降幅度越大。当成本传导率分别为1/3、2/3和1时,各行业产品价格的平均下降幅度分别为0.32%、0.93%和2.66%。(3)较为合理的中国整体成本传导率约为1/3,减税降费是2019年中国PPI下降的主要因素之一。当成本传导率为1/3时,模拟计算的PPI下降幅度与国家统计局公布的2019年PPI的下降幅度(-0.3%)非常接近。(4)减税降费使消费者价格下降,居民福利得以改善,且城镇居民福利改善高于农村居民。随着价格传导率增大,城镇居民与农村居民的人均福利改善差距扩大。     

税收福利成本文献述评

税收在资源配置过程中除有形的经济负担之外，还会产生无形的负担，即税收的课征会影响人们在经济活动中的决策。本文通过介绍税收福利成本概念，税收福利成本计量模型的介绍以及对税收福利成本实证研究的回顾三个角度对文献进行整理与评述，并进一步提出研究方向。