Social status and long-run effects of monetary policy in a two-sector monetary economy of endogenous growth

We develop a two-sector monetary economy with human capital accumulation and a cash constraint applied to both consumption and investment to examine the ways in which social status affects the impact of monetary policy on the long-run economic growth rate. Our findings suggest that the formation of human capital is an important determinant to the super-neutrality of money in the growth-rate sense. Within an economy with Lucas-type human capital formation, money is super-neutral; however, within an economy where human capital accumulation formation is more generalized, and in which both physical and human capital are used as inputs, the growth rate in money will have a negative effect on the long-run growth rate of the economy. The existence, uniqueness and saddle-path stability of balanced-growth equilibrium are also examined. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.