We construct a model with private information in which consumers write dynamic contracts with financial intermediaries. A role for money arises due to random limited participation of consumers in the financial market. Without defection constraints, a Friedman rule is optimal, the mean and variability of wealth tend to fall in the steady state, and the welfare effects of inflation are very small...

This essay distills the differences between zero inflation proponents and critics to three main questions: Can the central bank make a credible commitment to maintaining a stable price level? Should monetary policy be used to reduce the tax on capital income? And would reducing uncertainty about inflation produce significant social benefits? Proponents of zero inflation answer all three questio...

We adopt mechanism design to study the long-run consequences of inflation on aggregate output, trade, and welfare. Our theory captures multiple channels for individuals to respond to the inflation tax: search intensity (the intensive margin), market participation (the extensive margin), and substitution between money and a higher return asset. To determine the terms of trade in pairwise meeting...

A decade ago, in July 1990, the Australian economy had just entered a severe recession. Real GDP slowed in the first half of 1990, and then began to fall in the second half of the year. The rate of unemployment in mid 1990 was around 63/4 per cent but rose sharply in the following year. The rate of inflation was around 6 per cent, but was about to decline quickly, to levels not seen since the e...

Erceg et al. (2000) show that when both wages and prices are sticky, maximization of expected utility is equivalent to minimizing a loss function with three terms, involving measures of the variability of wage inflation, price inflation and the output gap respectively. Here we generalize their analysis, most importantly by not assuming the existence of output and employment subsidies that elimi...

Analyzing 50 years of inflation expectations data from several sources, we document substantial disagreement among both consumers and professional economists about expected future inflation. Moreover, this disagreement shows substantial variation through time, moving with inflation, the absolute value of the change in inflation, and relative price variability. We argue that a satisfactory model...

Achieving and maintaining price stability is the bedrock principle of a sound monetary policy. Price stability promotes economic growth and welfare by increasing the efficiency of the market mechanism, facilitating long-term planning, and minimizing distortions created by the interaction of inflation and the tax code, accounting rules, financial contracts, and the like. Price stability also inc...

One of the stylized facts of Canadian labour markets in the 1990s and into the new millennium is a lengthening in labour contract duration. Various authors have analyzed the underlying factors influencing the duration of labour contracts in Canada, but they have typically covered only periods up to the late 1980s or early 1990s. A particular area of interest to the Bank of Canada is the role pl...