IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v56y2009i7p968-978.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial sophistication and the distribution of the welfare cost of inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Boel, Paola
  • Camera, Gabriele

Abstract

The welfare cost of anticipated inflation is quantified in a calibrated model of the U.S. economy that exhibits tractable equilibrium dispersion in wealth and earnings. Inflation does not generate large losses in societal welfare, yet its impact varies noticeably across segments of society depending also on the financial sophistication of the economy. If money is the only asset, then inflation mostly hurts the wealthier and more productive agents, while those poorer and less productive may even benefit from inflation. The converse holds in a more sophisticated financial environment where agents can insure against consumption risk with assets other than money.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:7:p:968-978
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3932(09)00119-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Albanesi, Stefania, 2007. "Inflation and inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1088-1114, May.
    2. Cooley, Thomas F & Hansen, Gary D, 1989. "The Inflation Tax in a Real Business Cycle Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 733-748, September.
    3. Boel, Paola & Camera, Gabriele, 2006. "Efficient monetary allocations and the illiquidity of bonds," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1693-1715, October.
    4. Imrohoroglu, Ayse, 1992. "The welfare cost of inflation under imperfect insurance," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 79-91, January.
    5. Akyol, Ahmet, 2004. "Optimal monetary policy in an economy with incomplete markets and idiosyncratic risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 1245-1269, September.
    6. D. Aliprantis, C. & Camera, G. & Puzzello, D., 2007. "Anonymous markets and monetary trading," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 1905-1928, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Joydeep Bhattacharya & Joseph H. Haslag & Antoine Martin, 2005. "Heterogeneity, Redistribution, And The Friedman Rule," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(2), pages 437-454, May.
    9. 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.
    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. Chiu, Jonathan & Molico, Miguel, 2010. "Liquidity, redistribution, and the welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 428-438, May.
    12. 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.
    13. Aruoba, S. Boragan & Waller, Christopher J. & Wright, Randall, 2011. "Money and capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 98-116, March.
    14. Lagos, Ricardo & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2008. "Money and capital as competing media of exchange," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 247-258, September.
    15. Irina A. Telyukova & Randall Wright, 2008. "A Model of Money and Credit, with Application to the Credit Card Debt Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(2), pages 629-647.
    16. David Andolfatto, 2009. "On the Societal Benefits of Illiquid Bonds," Working Paper series 13_09, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    17. Goldfeld, Stephen M. & Sichel, Daniel E., 1990. "The demand for money," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 299-356, Elsevier.
    18. Erosa, Andres & Ventura, Gustavo, 2002. "On inflation as a regressive consumption tax," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 761-795, May.
    19. Reed, Robert R. & Waller, Christopher J., 2006. "Money and Risk Sharing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(6), pages 1599-1618, September.
    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. 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.
    2. Aruoba, S. Boragan & Waller, Christopher J. & Wright, Randall, 2011. "Money and capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 98-116, March.
    3. Ragot, Xavier, 2014. "The case for a financial approach to money demand," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 94-107.
    4. Stephen D. Williamson & Randall Wright, 2010. "New monetarist economics: methods," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(May), pages 265-302.
    5. S. Boragan Aruoba & Christopher J. Waller & Randall Wright, 2009. "Money and capital: a quantitative analysis," Working Papers 2009-031, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    6. Paola Boel, 2017. "The Redistributive Effects of Inflation and the Shape of Money Demand," LWS Working papers 25, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    7. 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.
    8. Antinolfi, Gaetano & Azariadis, Costas & Bullard, James, 2016. "The Optimal Inflation Target In An Economy With Limited Enforcement," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 582-600, March.
    9. Matthias Doepke, "undated". "Inflation as a Redistribution Shock: Effects on Aggregates and Welfare," UCLA Economics Online Papers 412, UCLA Department of Economics.
    10. Kakar, Venoo, 2014. "On the Redistributional Effects of Long-Run Inflation in a Cash-in-Advance Economy," MPRA Paper 55687, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Gabriele Camera & Yili Chien, 2014. "Understanding the Distributional Impact of Long‐Run Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(6), pages 1137-1170, September.
    12. Sunel, Enes, 2010. "On inflation, wealth inequality and welfare in emerging economies," MPRA Paper 25943, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Wen, Yi, 2015. "Money, liquidity and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1-24.
    14. Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2012. "The cost of inflation: A mechanism design approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1261-1279.
    15. 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.
    16. Oscar Afonso, 2023. "Losers and losses of COVID-19: a directed technical change analysis with fiscal and monetary policies," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1777-1821, June.
    17. Jonathan Chiu & Miguel Molico, 2011. "Uncertainty, Inflation, and Welfare," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 487-512, October.
    18. Curran, Michael & Dressler, Scott J., 2020. "Preferences, inflation, and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    19. 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.
    20. Hongfei Sun & Chenggang Zhou, 2018. "Monetary and fiscal policies in a heterogeneous‐agent economy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(3), pages 747-783, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Money Heterogeneity Friedman rule Trade frictions Calibration;

    JEL classification:

    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    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:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:7:p:968-978. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

    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.