Download or read book Welfare Cost of Low Inflation written by Mr.Howell H. Zee and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1998-08-01 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper provides general equilibrium estimates of the steady-state welfare gains of lowering inflation from a low level to close to price stability, using an overlapping-generations growth model. Money demand is modeled on the basis that real money balances are a factor of production. Assuming a standard Fisher equation modified by the presence of an income tax, it is found that inflation unambiguously reduces capital intensity, drives up the before-tax real rate of return to capital, and unambiguously imposes a life-time welfare cost. This welfare cost is, however, quantitatively very modest (under 0.2 percent of GDP annually) within reasonable ranges of all parameter values.
Download or read book On Price Stability and Welfare written by Mr.Etienne B. Yehoue and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The financial crisis in the advanced countries that began in 2007 has led central bankers to adopt unconventional policy measures as policy interest rates neared the zero bound. One suggestion (Blanchard, Dell’Ariccia, and Mauro, 2010) has been to raise inflation targets to provide more room for policy rate easing during crises. This paper addresses a different issue: the relationship between inflation and welfare. The literature is surveyed and a model is developed. A key conclusion is that an increase in inflation targets gives rise to additional welfare costs, even after the extra room to maneuver above the zero lower bound for nominal policy rates is taken into account. Based on parameter values that fit U.S. data, the additional welfare costs of raising inflation targets from 2 to 4 percent are estimated at about 0.3 percent of annual real income. A rise to 10 percent would yield additional welfare costs of about 1 percent of real income. Other parameter values yield welfare costs as high as 7 (respectively 30) percent of real income for raising inflation targets from 2 to 4 (respectively from 2 to 10) percent. The full costs of raising inflation targets are likely to be higher because the model used to generate these estimates does not account for higher inflation-induced volatility.
Download or read book Welfare Costs of Inflation Seigniorage and Financial innovation written by Mr.Jose De Gregorio and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the welfare effects of mitigating the costs of inflation. In a simple model where money reduces transaction costs, a fall in the costs of inflation is equivalent to financial innovation. This can be caused by paying interest on deposits, indexing money, or “dollarizing.” Results indicate that financial innovation raises welfare in low inflation economies while reducing it in high inflation economies, due to the offsetting indirect effect of higher inflation to finance the budget.
Download or read book On the Welfare Cost of Inflation written by Robert E. Lucas (Jr) and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Costs and Benefits of Price Stability written by Martin Feldstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the Federal Reserve and central banks worldwide have enjoyed remarkable success in their battle against inflation. The challenge now confronting the Fed and its counterparts is how to proceed in this newly benign economic environment: Should monetary policy seek to maintain a rate of low-level inflation or eliminate inflation altogether in an effort to attain full price stability? In a seminal article published in 1997, Martin Feldstein developed a framework for calculating the gains in economic welfare that might result from a move from a low level of inflation to full price stability. The present volume extends that analysis, focusing on the likely costs and benefits of achieving price stability not only in the United States, but in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom as well. The results show that even small changes in already low inflation rates can have a substantial impact on the economic performance of different countries, and that variations in national tax rules can affect the level of gain from disinflation.
Download or read book How Costly is Sustained Low Inflation for the U S Economy written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors study the welfare cost of inflation in a general equilibrium life-cycle model that includes households that live for many periods, production and capital, simple monetary and financial sectors, and a fairly elaborate government sector. The government's taxation of capital income is not indexed for inflation. They find that a plausibly calibrated version of this model has a steady state that matches a variety of facts about the postwar U.S. economy. They use the model to estimate the welfare cost of permanent, policy-induced changes in the inflation rate and find that most of the costs of inflation are direct and indirect consequences of the fact that inflation increases the effective tax rate on capital income. The cost estimates are an order of magnitude larger that other estimates in the literature.
Download or read book A Transitional Analysis of the Welfare Cost of Inflation written by Clark A. Burdick and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Welfare Cost of Permanent Inflation and Optimal Short run Economic Policy written by Martin Feldstein and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a minimum, this paper should serve as a warning against too easy an acceptance of the view that the costs of sustained inflation are small relative to the costs of unemployment. If a temporary reduction in unemployment causes a permanent increase in inflation, the present value of the resulting future welfare costs may well exceed the temporary short-run gain. Previous analyses have underestimated the cost of a permanent increase in the inflation rate because they have ignored the growth of the economy and therefore the growth of the future instantaneous welfare costs. In the important case in which the growth of aggregate income exceeds the social discount rate, no reduction in unemployment can justify any permanent increase in the rate of inflation. Quite the contrary, if the inflation rate is above its optimal level, the economy should then be deflated to reduce the inflation rate regardless of the temporary consequences for unemployment.
Download or read book Reducing Inflation written by Christina D. Romer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there is ample evidence that high inflation is harmful, little is known about how best to reduce inflation or how far it should be reduced. In this volume, sixteen distinguished economists analyze the appropriateness of low inflation as a goal for monetary policy and discuss possible strategies for reducing inflation. Section I discusses the consequences of inflation. These papers analyze inflation's impact on the tax system, labor market flexibility, equilibrium unemployment, and the public's sense of well-being. Section II considers the obstacles facing central bankers in achieving low inflation. These papers study the precision of estimates of equilibrium unemployment, the sources of the high inflation of the 1970s, and the use of non-traditional indicators in policy formation. The papers in section III consider how institutions can be designed to promote successful monetary policy, and the importance of institutions to the performance of policy in the United States, Germany, and other countries. This timely volume should be read by anyone who studies or conducts monetary policy.
Download or read book The Welfare Costs of Inflation written by Luca Benati and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We estimate the welfare costs of inflation originating from lack of liquidity satiation - as in Bailey (1956), Friedman (1969), Lucas (2000), and Ireland (2009) - for the U.S., U.K., Canada, and three countries/economic areas (Switzerland, Sweden, and the Euro area) in which interest rates have recently plunged below zero. We pay special attention to (i) the fact that, as shown by recent experience, zero cannot be taken as the effective lower bound (ELB); (ii) the possibility that, as discussed by Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (2000), the money demand curve may become flatter at low interest rates; (iii) the functional form for money demand.; and (iv) what the most relevant proxy for the opportunity cost is. We report three main findings: (1) allowing for an empirically plausible ELB (e.g., -1%) materially increases the welfare costs compared to the standard benchmark of zero; (2) there is nearly no evidence that at low interest rates money demand curves may become flatter: rather, evidence for the U.S. (the country studied by Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (2000)) clearly points towards a steeper curve at low rates; and (3) welfare costs are, in general, non-negligible: this is especially the case for the Euro area, Switzerland, and Sweden, which, for any level of interest rates, demand larger amounts of M1 as a fraction of GDP. For policy purposes the implication is that, ceteris paribus, inflation targets for these countries should be set at a comparatively lower level.
Download or read book Inflation and Welfare written by Hans-Werner Sinn and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On the welfare cost of inflation written by Robert E. Lucas and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Costs and Benefits of Going from Low Inflation to Price Stability written by Martin S. Feldstein and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This paper evaluates the welfare gain from achieving price stability and compares it to the cost of the transition. In calculating the gain from price stability, the paper emphasizes the distortions caused by the interaction of inflation and capital income taxes. Because inflation exacerbates the tax distortions that would exist even with price stability, the annual deadweight loss of a two percent inflation rate is a surprisingly large one percent of GDP. Since the real gain from shifting to price stability grows in perpetuity at the rate of growth of GDP, its present value is a substantial multiple of this annual gain. Discounting the annual gains at the rate that investors require for risky equity investments (i.e., at the 5.1 percent real net-of-tax rate of return on the Standard and Poors portfolio of equities from 1970 to 1994) implies a present value gain equal to more than 35 percent of the initial level of GDP. Since the estimated cost of shifting from two percent inflation to price stability is about five percent of GDP, the gain substantially outweighs the cost of transition"--NBER website.
Download or read book Inflation Expectations written by Peter J. N. Sinclair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.
Download or read book The Welfare Cost of Inflation and the Regulations of Money Substitutes written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Monetary Theory as a Basis for Monetary Policy written by A. Leijonhufvud and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-08-08 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the inflationary 1970s, theoretical work on monetary policy has concentrated almost exclusively on price-level stabilization and the avoidance of nominal shocks. In the aftermath of the collapse of financial bubbles in various parts of the world, the accomplishments and limitations of this dominant approach are debated in this volume edited by Axel Leijonhufvud, with contributions by a number of noted monetary economists, including Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas.
Download or read book A Cost benefit Analysis of Going from Low Inflation to Price Stability in Spain written by Juan José Dolado and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Se propone evidencia empírica sobre la orientación de la política monetaria española de los últimos años para la reducción de la inflación y la estabilidad de los precios.
