The Sub-Optimality of the Friedman Rule and the Optimum Quantity of Money
The Sub-Optimality of the Friedman Rule and the Optimum Quantity of Money
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弗里德曼规则的次优性与最优货币数量
DOI：
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发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
0.4
通讯作者：
B. Smith
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Beatrix Paal;B. Smith
根据弗里德曼规则的逻辑，私人代理人持有货币的机会成本应该等于创造额外法定货币的社会成本。因此，名义利率应该为零。这一逻辑在许多情况下都是正确的，无论是否有各种扭曲。然而，在实践中，长期面临极低名义利率的经济体被视为表现很差，而不是表现很好。例子包括大萧条时期的美国，或过去十年的日本。事实上，名义利率处于低位的经济体往往会遭受严重和长期的衰退。这一观察表明，弗里德曼规则的逻辑需要重新评估。我们认为，低名义利率意味着法定货币是一种良好资产的可能性。因此，代理人被诱导以货币形式持有过多的储蓄，并以其他更具生产力的形式持有次优储蓄。因此，低名义利率会导致低投资率，在内生增长模型中，会导致低真实的增长率。这是遵循弗里德曼规则的代价。遵循弗里德曼规则的好处包括，银行可能会提供相当大的流动性，降低需要现金的交易成本。有了这个权衡，我们描述的条件下，弗里德曼规则是和不是最佳的。最后，我们的模型预测，过高的通货膨胀率和名义利率对经济增长是有害的。模型的这一含义与观察结果一致，反过来又意味着存在一个使经济的真实的增长率最大化的名义利率。我们描述了这个利率的特征，我们描述了什么时候是最优的，什么时候不是最优的，以推动名义利率到其增长最大化的水平。
According to the logic of the Friedman rule, the opportunity cost of holding money faced by private agents should equal the social cost of creating additional fiat money. Thus nominal rates of interest should be zero. This logic has been shown to be correct in a number of contexts, with and without various distortions. In practice, however, economies that have confronted very low nominal rates of interest over extended periods have been viewed as performing very poorly rather than as performing very well. Examples include the U.S. during the Great Depression, or Japan during the last decade. Indeed economies experiencing low nominal interest rates have often suffered severe and long-lasting recessions. This observation suggests that the logic of the Friedman rule needs to be reassessed. We consider the possibility that low nominal rates of interest imply that fiat money is a good asset. As a result, agents are induced to hold an excessive amount of savings in the form of money, and a suboptimal amount of savings in other, more productive forms. Hence low nominal interest rates can lead to low rates of investment and, in an endogenous growth model, to low rates of real growth. This is a cost of following the Friedman rule. Benefits of following the Friedman rule include the possibility that banks will provide considerable liquidity, reducing the cost of transactions that require cash. With this trade-off, we describe conditions under which the Friedman rule is and is not optimal. Finally, our model predicts that excessively high rates of inflation, and nominal rates of interest, are detrimental to growth. This implication of the model, which is consistent with observation, in turn implies that there is a nominal rate of interest that maximizes an economy's real growth rate. We characterize this interest rate, and we describe when it is and is not optimal to drive the nominal rate of interest to its growth maximizing level.