Search Frictions, Job Flows and Optimal Monetary Policy

Job creation and job destruction are investigated in an economy featured by search frictions in both labour and goods markets. We show that both the unemployment rate and the endogenous job destruction rate increase when the inflation rate rises, because the demand declines due to the increase in the cost of holding money. Our numerical exercises suggest that the destruction of lower productivity jobs and the creation of higher productivity jobs may be inefficiently low under the zero nominal interest rate, which in turn causes the deviation of optimal long run monetary policy from the Friedman rule.