货币与信息

Money and Information

Review of Economic Studies · 2004
被引 46
人大 A+FT50ABS 4*

中文导读

研究货币在生产者对商品质量有私人信息的市场中的作用。货币促进高质量商品生产,改善质量组合和福利;但当高质量生产者比例内生时,货币可能降低福利,因为低质量生产者获得消费保险,导致更多低质量生产者进入市场。

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of money in markets in which producers have private information about the quality of the goods they supply. When the fraction of high-quality producers in the economy is given, money promotes the production of high-quality goods, which improves the quality mix and welfare unambiguously. When this fraction is endogenous, however, we find that money can decrease welfare relative to the barter equilibrium. The origin of this inefficiency is that money provides consumption insurance to low-quality producers, which can result in a higher fraction of low-quality producers in the monetary equilibrium. Finally, we find that most often agents acquire more costly information in the monetary equilibrium than in the barter equilibrium. Consequently, money is welfare-enhancing because it promotes useful production and exchange, but not because it saves information costs.

货币信息不对称产品质量福利效应