Price Adjustment Costs and the Output-Inflation Trade-off

When prices are costly to adjust, there is a trade-off between the rate of inflation and the firm's average level of output. This trade-off is the result of fully optimizing behaviour by the firm. Sufficient conditions are developed for inflation to have no effect on output. However, these conditions are unlikely to be met in practice. This suggests that the superneutrality of money hypothesis is incompatible with the type of demand and cost curves normally encountered in economic theory. If the discount rate is positive, moderate rates of inflation will always lead to higher levels of output.