Transitional and steady-state costs of disinflation when growth is endogenous.

In a monetary version of the Uzawa (1965)-Lucas (1988) model of endogenous growth, this paper illustrates how a credible policy of rapid disinflation can induce temporary declines in employment and output, with the former exhibiting a significant degree of persistance; however, these temporary declines in employment and output are not associated with any nominal rigidities in the economy, and therefore do not represent dead-weight losses that occur along the transition path, but are instead a part of an optimal response to the policy change. The measured welfare benefits of disinflation are seen to be higher when the transition path is taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]