We develop a dynamic general equilibrium growth model, where households purchase final goods on cash or credit and have different capital and money endowments, to investigate whether inflation affects trends in income and consumption inequality. We show that, under a strong substitutability between cash and credit goods, inflation has a negative relationship with income inequality, but a U-shaped relationship with consumption inequality. The divergence between income and consumption inequality explains several recent empirical observations. This result has important policy implications, as consumption inequality better reflects the welfare distribution whereas income inequality fails to capture consumption disparities resulting from different consumption and asset distributions across households. In the growth model with heterogeneous households, there is a mixed relationship between growth and income inequality, confirming the existence of the Kuznets curve. The inflation-driven asset reallocation might also produce a Mundell–Tobin effect, enhancing growth.

我们开发了一个动态的一般均衡增长模型，其中家庭以现金或信贷购买最终商品，并拥有不同的资本和货币禀赋，以研究通货膨胀是否会影响收入和消费不平等的趋势。我们表明，在现金和信贷商品之间存在很强的可替代性的情况下，通货膨胀与收入不平等呈负相关，而与消费不平等呈 U 型关系。收入和消费不平等之间的差异解释了最近的几个实证观察。这一结果具有重要的政策意义，因为消费不平等更好地反映了福利分配，而收入不平等未能反映家庭之间不同消费和资产分配导致的消费差距。在异质家庭的增长模型中，增长和收入不平等之间存在混合关系，证实了库兹涅茨曲线的存在。通胀驱动的资产重新配置也可能产生蒙代尔-托宾效应，从而促进增长。