Forthcoming in Quantitative Economics
Joint work with Saroj Bhattarai and Jae Won LeeThis version: 2023/01. [Draft], [Online Appendix]
, Other versions: [FEDS 2021-13R], [CAMA WP 107/2020], [CESifo WP No. 8779]
We show that the effectiveness of redistribution policy is tied to how much inflation
it generates, and thereby, to monetary-fiscal adjustments that ultimately finance the transfers.
In the monetary regime, taxes increase to finance transfers while in the fiscal regime,
inflation rises, imposing inflation taxes on public debt holders. We show analytically that
the fiscal regime generates larger and more persistent inflation than the monetary regime.
In a two-sector model, we quantify the effects of the CARES Act in a COVID recession.
We find that transfer multipliers are larger, and that moreover,
redistribution is Pareto improving, under the fiscal regime.