The Cost of Inflation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteur principal: Veetil, Vipin P
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Veetil, Vipin P
author_facet Veetil, Vipin P
contents Empirical evidence suggests that there is little to no correlation between the rate of inflation and the size of price change. Economists have hitherto taken this to mean that monetary shocks do not generate much deviation in relative prices and therefore inflation does not hurt the economy by impeding the workings of the price system. This paper presents a production network model of inflationary dynamics in which it is well possible for inflation to have near-zero correlation with the size of price change yet cause significant distortion of relative prices. The relative price distortion caused by inflation critically depends on the spectral gap, degree distribution, and assortativity of the production network.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_18544
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Cost of Inflation
Veetil, Vipin P
Theoretical Economics
Social and Information Networks
Empirical evidence suggests that there is little to no correlation between the rate of inflation and the size of price change. Economists have hitherto taken this to mean that monetary shocks do not generate much deviation in relative prices and therefore inflation does not hurt the economy by impeding the workings of the price system. This paper presents a production network model of inflationary dynamics in which it is well possible for inflation to have near-zero correlation with the size of price change yet cause significant distortion of relative prices. The relative price distortion caused by inflation critically depends on the spectral gap, degree distribution, and assortativity of the production network.
title The Cost of Inflation
topic Theoretical Economics
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.18544