Research Database

This article investigates the relationship between inflation and output, in the data and in standard models. The article reports that empirical cross-country studies generally find a nonlinear, negative relationship between inflation and output, a relationship that standard models cannot come close to reproducing. The article demonstrates that the models' problem may be due to their standard narrow assumption that all money is held by the public for making transactions. When the models are adjusted to also assume that banks are required to hold money, the models do a much better job. The article concludes that researchers interested in studying the effects of monetary policy on growth should shift their attention away from printing money and toward the study of banking and financial regulations.

The U.S. Treasury could raise more revenue if it changed the way it auctions its debt. Under the current procedure, all bidders whose competitive bids for Treasury securities are accepted pay the prices they bid; different winning bidders, that is, pay different prices. Instead, economic theory says, all winning bidders should all pay the same price—that of the highest bid not accepted, or the price that just clears the market. This procedural change would increase the revenue that Treasury auctions raise primarily because it would decrease the amount of resources that bidders would spend collecting information about what other bidders are likely to do. It would also reduce the incentives for traders to attempt to manipulate the securities market.

Two mechanisms are considered through which money can play a role in a real business cycle model. One is in the form of aggregate price surprises when there is heterogeneity across individuals or groups of individuals (“islands”). These shocks affect the accuracy of information about real compensation that can be extracted from observed wage rates. Another, perhaps complementary, mechanism is that the amount of desired liquidity services varies over the cycle due to a trade-off between real money and leisure. This mechanism leads to price fluctuations even when the nominal money stock does not fluctuate. As is the case for the U.S. economy over the postwar period, the price level is then countercyclical. A key finding is that with neither mechanism do nominal shocks account for more than a small amount of variability in real output and in hours worked. Indeed, output variability may very well be lower the larger the variance of price surprises is.