Welfare costs of monetary policy uncertainty in the economy with shifting trend inflation

We study welfare costs of the uncertainty about monetary policy in the economy featuring shifting trend inflation. We follow Ruge-Murcia (J Econ Dyn Control 36: 914–-938, 2012) to employ the SMM approach to fit the model to the US data (1979Q1-2015Q1). We find that the monetary policy uncertainty affects economic welfare through different dimensions. On the one hand, the policy uncertainty itself distorts the economic welfare negligibly, not only by increasing volatilities of consumption and leisure, but also by decreasing their average levels. A higher level of trend inflation then signifies these changes to produce greater welfare costs. Furthermore, the adverse impacts of policy uncertainty on the economy, documented by the impulse response functions of macroeconomic variables to policy uncertainty shock, become larger when central banks raise their inflation targets. On the other hand, the costs of exogenous variations in trend inflation are larger if there is policy uncertainty.     

Money,liquidity and welfare

This paper develops an analytically tractable Bewley model of money demand to shed light on some important questions in monetary theory, such as the welfare cost of inflation. It is shown that when money is a vital form of liquidity to meet uncertain consumption needs, the welfare costs of inflation can be extremely large. With log utility and parameter values that best match both the aggregate money demand curve suggested by Lucas (2000) and the variance of household consumption, agents in our model are willing to reduce consumption by 3–4% to avoid 10% annual inflation. The astonishingly large welfare costs of inflation arise because inflation increases consumption risk by eroding the buffer-stock-insurance value of money, thus hindering consumption smoothing at the household level. Such an inflation-induced increase in consumption risk at the micro level cannot be captured by representative-agent models or the Bailey triangle. Although the development of financial intermediation can mitigate the problem, with realistic credit limits the welfare loss of moderate inflation still remains several times larger than estimations based on the Bailey triangle. Our findings provide a strong justification for adopting a low inflation target by central banks, especially in developing countries where money is the major form of household financial wealth.     

Time-varying money demand and real balance effects

This paper presents an analysis of the stimulants and consequences of money demand dynamics. By assuming that household's money holdings and consumption preferences are not separable, we demonstrate that the interest-elasticity of demand for money is a function of the household's preference to hold real balances, the extent to which these preferences are not separable in consumption and real balances, and trend inflation. An empirical study of U.S. data revealed that there was a gradual fall in the interest elasticity of money demand of approximately one-third during the 1970s due to high trend inflation. A further decline in the interest-elasticity of the demand for money was observed in the 1980s due to the changing household preferences that emerged in response to financial innovation. These developments led to a reduction in the welfare cost of inflation that subsequently explains the rise in monetary neutrality observed in the data.     

CALCULATING WELFARE COSTS OF INFLATION IN A SEARCH MODEL WITH PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY: A CALIBRATION EXERCISE

Using US cross‐sectional data, this paper calculates the welfare cost of a 10 percent inflation for different individuals and finds that the difference in cost between the poorest 20 percent, measured by their net worth, and the richest 20 percent is in the order of 102 percent. That is, a poor person is on average willing to forgive 102 percent more of their total consumption in order to have inflation reduced from 10 percent to 0. In absolute terms this represents a cost of 0.461 percent of consumption for the poorest and 0.228 percent for the richest. I accomplish this by introducing preference heterogeneity in a monetary search model first developed by Lagos and Wright, and calibrate the model to match each agent's type of cash holdings, approximated by their holdings in transactional accounts that bear almost no interest, as a fraction of their net worth using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. I also show that this welfare difference increases to 130 percent (2.28 percent for the poorest 20 percent and 0.992 percent for the richest 20 percent) whenever frictions in the use of money are imposed (holdup problem). This distributional effect is further augmented if more frictions in the terms of trade are present. The ability to explicitly model these frictions is the advantage of using this model. Hence, inflation in this framework, as other studies have shown, acts as a regressive consumption tax; and this regressiveness is augmented with the holdup problem.     

Does wage-inflation targeting complement foreign exchange intervention? An evaluation of a multi-target,two-instrument monetary policy framework

We assess the inclusion of wage inflation as an intermediate target of an emerging central bank using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky wages and prices calibrated for the South Korean economy. The model includes wage inflation as an additional target jointly with domestic price inflation and the output gap in a Taylor- type interest rate rule operating with a sterilized foreign exchange (FX) intervention rule. Our results show a complementary relationship between wage inflation targeting and price inflation targeting. That is, by supplementing price inflation targeting with wage inflation targeting, welfare improves for cases with and without sterilized FX intervention. When intervention is in place, wage inflation targeting has the added advantage of reducing the volatilities of nominal exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves thereby promoting a more sustainable conduct of FX intervention.     

WELFARE COSTS OF SHIFTING TREND INFLATION: STAGGERED WAGE AND PRICE CONTRACTS

We develop a New Keynesian model featuring staggered price and wage contracts to study welfare costs of exogenous variations in trend inflation. The analyses show that the consequences of constant positive trend inflation and shifting trend inflation are severe, especially when trend inflation is high. Among two channels, staggered wage contracts play a vital role in transmitting adverse impacts of constant and shifting trend inflation into the economy. Without the staggered wage channel, these costs are modest. We also conduct exercises to examine the sensitivity of welfare costs to a wide range of plausible parameters. The results show that if the price and wage friction are sufficiently large, the price and wage indexation level are sufficiently small, or there is upward biased trend inflation process, the welfare costs become larger.     

我国通胀与经济增长放缓福利 成本的比较研究

经济理论和实践经验通常认为我国经济增长放缓的福利成本远高于通货膨胀的福利成本,因而“保增长”的重要性远高于“防通胀”。本文认为这一判断已经不再适用于我国当前情况,核心原因是当前家庭的财产积累水平较以往有了大幅度提高,通胀将通过财产再分配效应造成严重的社会福利损失。经过计算发现：在各组参数设定下,5%的通胀和经济增速下滑一个百分点所造成的社会总福利成本（对消费的补偿比例）分别平均是18%和59%;通胀福利成本与增长放缓福利成本之比平均为329%,相比之下,在不考虑财产再分配效应的计算方法中,该比例仅为约16%。这说明在中长期“保增长”和“防通胀”都具有重要的社会福利意义,因此宏观调控应该将二者都作为重要的政策目标。     

Consumer preferences,the demand for Divisia money,and the welfare costs of inflation

This paper uses neoclassical demand theory to calculate the welfare costs of inflation. It considers the demand interactions between money, consumption goods, and leisure, relaxes the assumption of fixed consumer preferences, and addresses the inter-related problems of estimation of money demand functions, instability of money demand relations, and monetary aggregation. It makes full use of the relevant economic theory and econometrics and generates inference in terms of long-run welfare costs of inflation that is internally consistent with the data and models used.     

Does trend inflation make a difference?

Although the average inflation rate of developed countries in the postwar period has been greater than zero, much of the extensive literature on monetary policy has employed models that assume zero steady-state inflation. In comparing four estimated medium–scale NK DSGE models with real and nominal frictions, we seek to shed light on the quantitative implications of omitting trend inflation, that is, positive steady–state inflation. We compare certain population characteristics and the IRFs for the four models by applying two loss functions based on a point distance criterion and on a distribution distance criterion, respectively. Finally, we compare the RMSE forecasts and we consider also an indirect inference test. We repeat the analysis for three sub-periods: the Great Inflation, the Great Moderation and the union of the two periods. We do not find strong evidence that a model with trend inflation should always be preferred. During periods of high inflation or when a backward-looking component, indexed to past inflation, is not incorporated in the model, using a model that employs trend inflation can improve the analysis. Nevertheless, where there is uncertainty concerning the change of an inflation regime, such as the recent drop, we suggest adopting a traditional approach that does not use trend inflation.     

Inflation volatility,economic growth and monetary policy in Bangladesh

This article provides an overview of the trends and movements of CPI-inflation in Bangladesh since the early 1950s and examines the key issues in rule-based monetary policy for price stability, implying low and stable inflation, in this country. Under a fixed exchange rate system, inflation in Bangladesh was moderately high and volatile during the 1950s and 1960s. Since the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, inflation in Bangladesh has remained moderately high on average and highly volatile and persistent under a fixed-pegged exchange rate system or under a managed floating system since 2003. Using data from the early 1970s or earlier depending on data availability, the article undertakes both Granger-causality and the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) analysis with two models. The first model is comprised of such variables as inflation, the real interest rate, the real exchange rate and output growth, and the second model is comprised of the volatilities of money growth, real output growth and inflation. Then, based on the empirical findings, the article concludes that a rule-based monetary policy, namely monetary targeting or inflation targeting, remains appropriate for Bangladesh provided that it adopts a more flexible, if not freely floating, exchange rate system. The article suggests that the use of monetary policy to achieve multiple objectives under a fixed-pegged exchange rate system creates a time-inconsistency problem, reduces monetary policy credibility and makes it (monetary policy) ineffective in lowering inflation and its volatility. Low credibility of monetary policy in particular raises inflation persistence. Within the present monetary-policy framework in Bangladesh, the article illustrates how the fixed-pegged exchange rate system has generated money growth volatility in the presence of large-scale inflows of overseas workers’ remittances and readymade garments export earnings. This does not seem to be a concern of the central bank of Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bank); rather, it (Bangladesh Bank) pursues monetary-base targeting to keep inflation low and stable after considering economic growth. The consequent diminishing credibility of monetary policy has kept inflation volatile and persistent, which has adversely affected economic growth.     

中国通货膨胀的福利成本研究

Inflation is always an important indicator to measure whether economy is stable and healthy. This paper provides a substantive survey of the research on the welfare cost of inflation, and uses the methods of consumer’s surplus and neo-classical general equilibrium models respectively to estimate the welfare cost of inflation in China. The results show that high inflation will cause huge welfare cost in China, so keeping low inflation is beneficial to the entire economic welfare of China. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2007, (4): 30–42, 159     

通货膨胀问题国外研究进展与评述

20世纪70年代以来通货膨胀的频发,成为严重困扰世界各国经济运行的主要难题之一,引发了众多国外学者对通货膨胀的广泛关注以及从宏观层面到微观基础层面的深入研究。本文主要从通货膨胀的福利成本、通货膨胀的不确定性、持续性和通货膨胀目标制四个方面入手,着重回顾与评论20世纪90年代尤其是21世纪以来的国外学者研究通货膨胀问题的成果,以期在把握通货膨胀问题研究的进展中,总结治理经验与合理借鉴应对政策。     

A critical assessment of existing estimates of US core inflation

Core inflation rates are widely calculated. The perceived benefit of core inflation rates is that they help to inform monetary policy. This is achieved by uncovering the underlying trend in inflation or by helping to forecast inflation. Studies which compare core inflation rates frequently assess candidate core rates on these two criteria. Using US data, the two standard tests of core inflation – the ability to track trend inflation and the ability to forecast inflation – are applied to a more comprehensive set of core inflation rates than has been the case in the literature to date. Furthermore, the tests are applied in a more rigorous fashion. A key difference in this paper is the inclusion of benchmarks to the tests, which is non-standard in the literature. Two problems with core inflation rates emerge. Firstly, it is very difficult to distinguish between different core rates according to these tests, as they tend to perform to a very similar level. Secondly, once the benchmarks are introduced to the tests, the core inflation rates fail to outperform the benchmarks. This failure suggests that core inflation rates are of less practical usefulness than previously thought.     

The Optimal Perception of Inflation Persistence is Zero

This study shows that, in an economy with inflation persistence, it is always welfare improving for a central bank that operates under discretion to behave as if there were no inflation persistence. Under reasonable assumptions about inflation persistence, all of the inefficiency associated with discretionary policymaking is then removed.     

STATIC AND DYNAMIC EFFECTS OF CENTRAL BANK TRANSPARENCY

Using a New Keynesian framework, this paper shows that, under optimal discretion and optimal pre‐commitment in a timeless perspective, imperfect transparency about the relative weight assigned by the central bank to output‐gap stabilization generally reduces the average reaction of inflation to inflation shocks and the volatility of inflation, but increases those of the output gap in static and dynamic terms, and more so when inflation shocks are highly persistent. When inflation shocks are moderately persistent, opacity could improve social welfare if the weight assigned to output‐gap stabilization is low and this is more likely under pre‐commitment than under discretion.     

Inflation and income distribution in Central America,Mexico, Panama,and the Dominican Republic

Analyses of the impact of inflation on income distribution typically only consider the general inflation rate. However, when the consumption structure of households is shaped by its income level and inflation varies across goods and services, they are affected differently by inflation. The aim of this study is to contribute to the analysis of this effect in Central American countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica), Panama, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic (CAPMDR) for the period 2007–2018. According to our findings, there have been significant differences in the inflation rates faced by different income groups. By employing these percentile‐specific inflation rates, we have computed an “inflation‐corrected Gini index.” This adjustment is important because although inequality has been decreasing during past years in the countries in our sample, on average, about half of the gains observed using the standard Gini index are lost once the Gini indices are corrected for inflation, a clearly nonnegligible magnitude.     

Oil shocks and monetary policy rules in emerging economies

We examine the effects of shocks in the oil market on key macroeconomic variables in small open economies using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky prices and imperfect competition under different monetary policy rules. The numerical solutions show that the types of exchange rate regimes and monetary policies could partly explain the trends in macroeconomic volatilities considering negative shocks to oil supply (Hamilton, 1983) and positive shocks to oil demand (Kilian, 2009). These findings are confirmed in vector autoregressive responses for Chile and Israel with inflation targeting under flexible exchange regimes and Hong Kong with fixed regime.     

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 dynamic welfare cost of seignorage tax and consumption tax in a neoclassical growth model with a cash-in-advance constraint

Using a public finance approach, this study investigates welfare costs between seignorage and consumption taxes in a standard growth model. One of these two taxes is used to finance exogenous public spending to balance the government budget. The steady-state welfare cost of consumption taxes is lower if the consumption effect dominates the leisure effect. This paper compares equilibrium along transitional dynamic and steady-state paths and finds that because of lower consumption and leisure and thus higher welfare costs of consumption taxes during early periods, the welfare cost of consumption taxes is larger than the welfare cost of seignorage taxes.     

Explaining peak inflation rates prior to disinflationary policy adjustments or what got us into this mess?

This study investigates, using annual data from 1974–2004, whether unionization rates, trade openness and central bank independence can help explain cross-national and inter-temporal variations in level of peak inflation prior to a disinflationary policy adjustment. I find that unionization is positively associated with both peak inflation rates whereas more independent central banks and trade openness are correlated with lower inflation levels. These results are robust to controlling for the high inflation decade of the 1970s and to using average (rather than peak) inflation as the explanatory variable.