Inflation and Growth-英文文献.pdf

MAY / JU N E 1 9 9 6 Robert J. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard University. The initial version of this paper was written while he was Houblon-Norman research fellow at the Bank of England. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation. Inflation and Figure 1a, b Growth Histograms for Inflation Rate Number of Observations 200 Robert J. Barro 150 n recent years, many central banks have placed increased emphasis on price Istability. Monetary policy—whether 100 expressed in terms of interest rates or growth of monetary aggregates—has been increasingly geared toward the achieve- 50 ment of low and stable inflation. Central bankers and most other observers view 0 price stability as a worthy objective 0.00 0.30 0.60 0.90 1.20 1.50 because they think that inflation is costly. Inflation Rate Some of these costs involve the average Number of Observations rate of inflation, and others relate to the 12.5 variability and uncertainty of inflation. But the general idea is that businesses and 10.0 households are thought to perform poorly when inflation is high and unpredictable. The academic literature contains a lot 7.5 of theoretical work on the costs of infla- tion, as reviewed rece