Incomplete Markets and the Output-inflation Tradeoff

This paper analyses the effects of money shocks on macroeconomic aggregates in a flexible-price, incomplete-markets environment that generates persistent wealth inequalities amongst agents. In this framework, unexpected money shocks redistribute wealth from the cash-rich employed to the cash-poor unemployed, and induce the former to increase their labour supply in order to maintain their desired levels of consumption and precautionary savings. The reduced-form dynamics of the model is a textbook "output-inflation tradeoff" equation whereby inflation shocks raise current output. The attenuating role of mean inflation and money growth persistence on this non-neutrality tradeoff, as well as some of the welfare implications of wealth redistribution, are also examined.