Inflation and Welfare: A Search Approach
用货币搜寻模型评估通胀的福利成本，发现当买家占有实际余额的社会边际收益时，福利三角方法有效；否则需按卖家市场势力放大。引入资本和内生参与后，弗里德曼规则可能非最优。
This paper uses a search model of monetary exchange to provide new insights for evaluating the welfare costs of inflation. We first show that the search model of money can rationalize the estimates of the welfare cost of inflation based on the “welfare triangle” methodology of Bailey (1956) and Lucas (2000) provided that buyers appropriate the social marginal benefit of their real balances. For other mechanisms, the measure given by the welfare triangle has to be scaled up by a factor that increases with sellers' market power. We introduce capital and endogenous participation decisions and study how the cost of inflation is affected. We provide calibrated examples in which a deviation from the Friedman rule is optimal.