Credit and inflation under borrower?s lack of commitment

In this paper we study the effects of monetary policy on privately supplied credit in model economies where money is needed for transaction purposes and agents who default on their loans cannot participate in the credit market but are allowed to accumulate money. In our deterministic benchmark economy where agents alternate in productivity, credit has the role of smoothing consumption. We show that deflation crowds out credit completely. The reason is that deflation increases the value of being excluded from the credit market and eliminates the incentive to repay loans. When inflation is positive but low, credit, consumption smoothing and welfare increase with inflation, until inflation reaches a threshold at which the allocation is efficient and money becomes superneutral.     

产业政策提升中国数字企业的全要素生产率了吗？

提升数字企业全要素生产率是促进数字经济高质量发展的必要方式,而产业政策的有效使用将对这一过程起到重要的推动作用。本文利用2007-2020年中国数字行业上市企业的面板数据,实证检验了政府补贴、税收优惠、信贷支持和市场准入四类产业政策对数字企业全要素生产率的影响。研究发现,信贷支持显著促进了数字企业全要素生产率的提升,市场准入则起到显著的负向作用,政府补贴和税收优惠对数字企业全要素生产率的增长无明显效果,该结论在进行一系列稳健性检验后仍保持稳健。异质性和作用机制检验的结果表明,产业政策对数字企业全要素生产率存在产权、企业规模和企业生命周期方面的异质性作用,信贷支持和市场准入则分别通过缓解企业融资约束和加剧企业过度投资的方式影响数字企业的全要素生产率。本文的研究结论对于政府制定更为精准有效的产业政策具有一定的启示意义。     

Inflation and capital gains taxes in a small open economy

Inflation distorts an economy through many channels. This paper highlights the interaction between inflation and capital gains tax and their distortions to a small open economy through the financial market. This research captures several observations. First, capital formation or investment is an important channel for consumption smoothing over the life cycles. Second, capital gains are taxed only when the gains are realized. Third, inflation introduces an upward bias in the calculation of tax base. Thus, a capital gains tax in the presence of inflation can have a significant welfare effect even though its contribution to the government revenue is relatively small. The quantitative analysis shows that high inflation alone can lower social welfare. This problem becomes more severe when capital gains tax is introduced in an inflationary economy. The implicit inflation tax can be more hazardous to the economy than the explicit counterpart.     

Devaluation, Asymmetric Money Demand, and Investment in a Small Open Economy

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and investment when cash is required to purchase some consumption goods in a small open economy while others are purchased with foreign currency or on credit. Devaluation acts as a differential tax on the good that must be purchased with domestic money and lowers the return to the factor used intensively in this sector. If this sector is relatively labor intensive, the steady-state capital stock will increase in response to higher inflation. Nonneutrality of inflation exists even though money is only held for consumption purposes.     

Optimal long-run inflation with occasionally binding financial constraints

This paper studies the optimal long-run inflation rate in a simple New Keynesian model with occasionally binding collateral constraints that intermediate-good firms face on hiring labor. The paper finds that the optimal long-run annual inflation rate is around 1.5% if the economy is hit by a total factor productivity (TFP) shock and nearly 2.5% if the economy is subject to a markup shock. The shadow value of the collateral constraint is akin to an endogenous cost-push shock. Differently from usual cost-push shocks, however, this shock is asymmetric as it takes non-negative values only. Since the mean of this asymmetric endogenous cost-push shock is positive, inflation is also positive on average. In addition, a binding collateral constraint resembles a time-varying tax on labor, which the monetary authority can smooth by setting a positive inflation rate. More generally, the basic result is related to standard Ramsey theory in that optimal policy smoothes distortions over time.     

Granger causality of the inflation–growth mirror in accession countries*

The paper presents a model in which the exogenous money supply causes changes in the inflation rate and the output growth rate. While inflation and growth rate changes occur simultaneously, the inflation acts as a tax on the return to human capital and in this sense induces the growth rate decrease. Shifts in the model's credit sector productivity cause shifts in the income velocity of money that can break the otherwise stable relationship between money, inflation, and output growth. Applied to two accession countries, Hungary and Poland, a VAR system is estimated for each that incorporates endogenously determined multiple structural breaks. Results indicate Granger causality positively from money to inflation and negatively from inflation to growth for both Hungary and Poland, as suggested by the model, although there is some feedback to money for Poland. Three structural breaks are found for each country that are linked to changes in velocity trends, and to the breaks found in the other country.     

Financial innovations and currency demand: Some new evidence

This paper presents new evidence on the importance of financial innovations for the demand for currency. We use Finnish data on credit card transactions to estimate a currency demand equation which fits the data very well, implies meaningful elasticities and does not suffer from obvious diagnostic problems such as parameter instability. As far as the key elasticities are concerned, it turns out that credit card transactions have a strong offsetting effect on currency demand. By contrast, inflation and tax evasion have only an insignificant demand effect.     

Inflation,taxes and housing: A theoretical analysis

This paper examines the real effects of inflation under a distortionary tax system. The presence of a tax subsidy to housing substantially alters the effects of inflation on the capital intensity of production and on the market interest rate. The analysis suggests that not taxing the flow of services from housing has caused inflation to reduce capital intensity, thereby decreasing U.S. productivity. Furthermore, this tax subsidy has caused inflation to raise the real interest rate while reducing the after-tax real returns to assets.     

Money, Neutrality of Consumption Taxes, and Growth in Intertemporal Optimizing Models

This paper considers the effects of a proportional consumption tax with the same rate over time on the real growth path of a monetary economy. The analysis uses a variety of stylized monetary growth models in which the individual's consumption-saving decision is based on intertemporal utility maximization (e.g. the money-in-utility, transaction-costs, and cash-in-advance models). The neutrality of consumption taxation depends on the assumed role of money in the respective models, even though the tax revenue collected is fully rebated to consumers as lump-sum transfers. The consumption tax is generally superior to inflation tax (i.e. the rate of monetary growth) in terms of steady-state welfare, as long as the labour supply is fixed.
JEL Classification Numbers: E21, E41, E62, H24     

STICKY PRICES AND COSTLY CREDIT

We develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments, then put it to work in applications. Agents use cash and credit because the former (latter) is subject to the inflation tax (transaction costs). Frictions that make the choice of payment method interesting also imply equilibrium price dispersion. We derive closed-form solutions for money demand, and show how to simultaneously account for the price-change facts, cash–credit shares in micro data, and money-interest correlations in macro data. The effects of inflation on welfare, price dispersion and markups are discussed, as are nonstationary equilibria with dynamics in the price distribution.     

Tax,credit constraints,and the big costs of small inflation

This paper develops a heterogeneous‐agent overlapping generations model that examines how the neutrality of the tax system with respect to inflation depends on the price elasticity of the housing supply. The model, which endogenises house prices and rents, and which incorporates detailed tax regulations and bank‐imposed credit constraints, shows (a) inflation has large effects on the tenure arrangements of young households irrespective of the housing supply elasticity; and (b) inflation can improve the welfare of some low income young households if the supply is sufficiently elastic. The welfare costs of inflation are reduced by taxing real rather than nominal interest.     

The inflation tax in an open economy with imperfect competition

This paper studies the national welfare maximizing inflation tax in an open economy with imperfect competition. It shows that the presence of a monopolistic distortion dampens the incentive to engage in strategic use of the inflation tax. If this dampening effect is strong enough, monetary policy becomes completely inward-looking, restoring the Friedman rule as an equilibrium strategy regardless of the actions of the foreign government. This aspect of the policy interaction—driven entirely by the presence of imperfect competition—is important because it determines the underlying structure of the policy game and is therefore crucial for determining whether or not there exist welfare gains from international monetary cooperation.     

Monetary policy and credit cards: Evidence from a small open economy

This paper uses a unique monthly data set that covers the overall credit card usage in a small-open economy, Turkey, to investigate a possible credit channel of monetary policy transmission through credit cards. A reduced-form vector autoregression analysis is employed, where the forecast error variance decompositions are calculated for three-year windows over the period 2002–2009. It is shown that, during the recent financial crisis that has started in 2007, the monetary policy of Turkey has shifted toward focusing on output volatility and interest rate smoothing through setting short-term interest rates, while the inflation rate has been mostly affected by exchange rate movements and inflation inertia. Credit card usage has an increasing effect on inflation rates through time, requiring more policy emphasis on the credit channel through credit cards. When the effects of the credit view and the money view are compared, the former seems to be more effective on the real side of the economy, independent of the level of inflation.     

Does a Recession Call for Less Stringent Environmental Policy? A Partial-Equilibrium Second-Best Analysis

This paper analyses second-best optimal environmental policy responses to real and financial shocks in a two-period partial equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, an environmental externality, and credit constraints. We show that, to alleviate credit constraints and encourage investment, the second-best optimal emission tax falls short of marginal emission damages. The optimal response to shocks depends on how the shock affects the size of the environmental and credit market failures and the effectiveness of the tax in alleviating these market failures. Under mildly restrictive assumptions on functional forms, the optimal response to a (persistent) negative productivity shock or a tightening of credit is to reduce the emission tax. Our results are informative for how climate change policy should optimally change with the business cycle.     

Workforce or workfare? The optimal use of work requirements when labour is supplied along the extensive margin

This paper explores the use of workfare as part of a tax mix when labour supply responses are along the extensive margin. In an economy where the government has a priori chosen any tax‐and‐benefit schedule, we show that, despite their common goal of providing additional incentives for individuals to enter the labour force, workfare and an earned income tax credit are at odds with each other. We also show that, in the presence of an optimal nonlinear income tax, introducing unproductive workfare is always suboptimal when individuals face the same disutility of being on workfare. When this disutility is heterogeneous, unproductive workfare may be a useful policy tool.     

Monetary policy,endogenous transactions,and financial market segmentation

An endogenous financial market segmentation model is constructed to explore the role of costly credit as a medium of exchange in the monetary policy elasticity of financial market activity. Against inflation risk, credit is an alternative insurance device to a cash transfer from the financial market. In equilibrium, credit reduces the financial market activity rate. Monetary policy has redistributive effects across economic individuals. Inflation may not tax financial market non-participants. However, it may tax financial market participants by increasing the financial market activity rate. Welfare may increase and the optimal money growth rate can be positive.     

Tax collection lags and the revenue-maximising inflation

When tax payments take place with a considerable time lag, inflation erodes part of their real value, and this loss may be comparable or even surpass the well-known gains from seigniorage. The paper finds that for the economy of Greece, a reduction of inflation will actually raise the total sum of tax collection and seigniorage, thus easing and not aggravating the debt-accumulation process.     

Inflation,tax rules,and the prices of land and gold

Traditional theory implies that the relative price of consumer goods and of such real assets as land and gold should not be permanently affected by the rate of inflation. A change in the general rate of inflation should, in equilibrium, cause an equal change in the rate of inflation for each asset price. The experience of the past decade has been very different from the predictions of this theory: the prices of land, gold, and other such stores of value have increased by substantially more than the general price level. The present paper presents a simple theoretical model that explains the positive relation between the rate of inflation and the relative price of such real assets. More specifically, in an economy with an income tax, an increase in the expected rate of inflation causes an immediate increase in the relative price of such ‘store of value’ real assets. The behavior of real asset prices discussed in this paper is thus a further example of the non-neutral response of capital markets to inflation in an economy with income taxes.     

不完全资本市场、预防性储蓄与通货膨胀的福利成本分析

本文假设不完全资本市场条件下个体的自我保险为持币的主要动机,在总体风险和个体风险的框架下,讨论了通货膨胀对异质个体福利的影响。研究表明:对于像中国这样一个有很强信贷约束的不完全资本市场国家,本方法比传统基于MIU和CIA的模型更能反映通货膨胀对中国居民福利的影响。传统的方法低估了对像中国这样的国家中个体的通货膨胀福利成本。此外研究还表明,平均失业期对个体造成的通货膨胀成本影响很大。那些没有储蓄计划个体的出现减少了所有个体的平均福利。通过对总体风险的讨论,我们发现较高的失业率(平均失业期)将大大增加通货膨胀的成本,而工作分享计划则是一种降低通货膨胀成本的好措施。