Inflation and Growth: Impatience and a Qualitative Equivalence

This paper studies the role of an endogenous time preference on the relationship between inflation and growth in the long run in both the money-in-utility-function (MIUF) and transaction costs (TC) models. We establish a qualitative equivalence between the two models in a setup without a labor-leisure tradeoff. When the time preference is decreasing (or increasing) in consumption and real balances, both the MIUF and TC models are qualitatively equivalent in terms of predicting a negative (or positive) relationship between inflation and growth in a steady state. Both a decreasing and an increasing time preference in consumption are consistent with the arguments in the literature. While a decreasing time preference in real balances corroborates with empirical evidence, there is no evidence in support of an increasing time preference in real balances.