Inflation Expectations, Wealth Perception, and Consumption Expenditure

Abstract

The literature on wealth perception has been focused on the tax discounting of government bonds and, to a lesser extent, the Pesek-Saving effect. The authors consider here, in addition, the effects of expected inflation on wealth perception. In the resulting broadened framework, they find empirically that there is overwhelming expected-inflation discounting of money, but little or no tax discounting of bonds. This has far-reaching policy implications that are contrary to conventional wisdom. Based on an examination of equilibrium consumption, bond-financed budget deficits are, surprisingly, found to be more stimulative than money-financed deficits. More importantly, open-market operations not only turn out to be the least potent, but can in fact produce perverse effects.