# The Economics of AI Inference: Inflation Dynamics, Welfare Costs, and Optimal Monetary Policy under the Inference-Cost Phillips Curve

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.20281 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20281/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08361/) (2020)
- [Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15556/) (2022)
- [Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02243/) (2019)
- [Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10350/) (2021)
- [Compute Trends Across Three Eras of Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05924/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We develop a unified microeconomic and monetary theory of artificial intelligence inference costs and their pass-through to inflation, welfare, and optimal monetary policy. We introduce the Inference-Cost Phillips Curve (ICPC), an augmented New Keynesian Phillips curve in which firm-level marginal costs of producing differentiated goods include a non-trivial AI inference component lambda-bar, and prove a closed-form structural slope kappa*_inf = lambda-bar * kappa, where kappa is the standard Calvo-Yun slope. We derive a welfare-relevant Hicks-Kaldor decomposition of consumer welfare under inference-cost shocks, prove a generalized Taylor principle for the inference-augmented economy, and characterize the optimal monetary policy response coefficient psi*_inf = (1 + phi*rho) * lambda-bar * kappa under commitment. A second-order welfare loss formula closes the model in closed form. We confront the theory with U.S. monthly data 2022:M01-2026:M04 using a two-step GMM estimator with Newey-West HAC standard errors and Hansen J-test, recovering an empirical slope kappa-hat_inf = 0.087 (HAC s.e. 0.021) which lies within one standard error of the structural prediction. A scaling regression over 50 rolling-window subwindows yields b-hat = 0.987 (R^2 = 0.998), consistent with a near-unit-elasticity pass-through. A G7 reduced-form panel with Driscoll-Kraay HAC standard errors yields b-hat^G7 = 0.094 (s.e. 0.026), and a Wald test fails to reject cross-country homogeneity (p = 0.78). The framework provides a single equilibrium scaffold for the joint study of AI inference cost dynamics, monetary policy under generative-AI shocks, and the welfare cost of inference-driven inflation.