东盟五国通货膨胀的福利成本研究

本文通过消费者剩余方法、补偿变量法和现金优先模型计算了东盟五国通货膨胀的福利成本。实证结果证明：5％的通货膨胀对东盟五国造成的福利损失都保持在总收入的0．01—0．5％之间，利用温和通胀来刺激经济发展的货币政策具备一定的可行性。但是当通胀率超过10％的时候，即恶性通胀发生以后，福利损失会成倍增长，通胀治理将成为货币政策当局的首要目标。

The Welfare Cost of Inflation in ASEAN-5

This paper investigates the welfare cost of inflation in ASEAN-5 countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippine, Singapore and Thailand. Based on their time series from 1990 to 2007, we measure the welfare cost using consumer surplus approach, compensating variation approach and cash-in-advance approach. According to the empirical result, two main conclusions are obtained. First, the gain from reducing the annual inflation rate from 5% to 0 is equivalent to an increase in real GDP of slightly hss than 0.5% in real GDP. Thus, it is reasonable to maintain economic growth by adopting moderate inflation under some conditions. Second, the hyper-inflation will lead to a huge cost of national welfare. In this way, it is necessary for the monetary authorities to take some countermeasures to conquer it.