Seminar by Chetan Ghate (IEG and ISI, Delhi)

Governments in EMDEs routinely intervene in agriculture markets to stabilize food prices in the wake of adverse shocks. Such interventions usually involve a large increase in the procurement and redistribution of food, which we call a redistributive policy shock. What is the impact of a redistributive policy shock on inflation and the distribution of consumption amongst rich and poor households? We build a tractable two-sector-two-agent NK DSGE model calibrated to the Indian economy. We show that for an inflation targeting central bank, consumer heterogeneity matters for whether monetary policy responses to a variety of shocks raises aggregate welfare or not.