ACCOUNTING FOR BUSINESS INCOME UNDER INFLATION: CURRENT ISSUES AND VIEWS IN THE UNITED STATES*

To adjust business accounting for inflation, one current proposal is to convert all dollar figures in existing financial statements to units of fixed general purchasing power. A widely offered alternative is to retain the dollar units but replace the historical-cost figures by current values. The two alternatives would yield very different results. After reviewing these and variant proposals, the analysis concentrates on certain major issues: the unit of measurement; the treatment of capital gains; the concept of capital maintenance; and the treatment of changes in the purchasing power of debt. Current value accounting would not correct for changes in the general price level and would involve far more difficult problems of concept and measurement than general purchasing power accounting. The latter is therefore preferable.     

ADJUSTING NET WORTH FOR PRICE CHANGES WITH REFERENCE TO THE CANADIAN SYSTEM OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

This paper develops a rationale for a comprehensive measure of income and provides illustrative calculations within the Canadian System of National Accounts for making adjustments to net worth for price changes.
The paper notes that the System of National Accounts is designed to provide a number of individual aggregates measuring total production, income, savings and net worth. There is no single overall comprehensive measure which reflects the combined effect of changes in income and wealth. Such a measure is of particular importance in periods of rapid or extensive price changes which affect not only purchasing power of income but also the value of assets held and liabilities outstanding with consequences on net worth positions. This paper explores these issues and develops techniques for measuring the effects of specific and overall price changes with respect to net worth of the various sectors in the economy, illustrated with data from the integrated Canadian System of National Accounts.     

THE REDISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF THE INFLATIONARY PROCESS IN JAPAN, 1955–75*

It is often discussed that inflation introduces a substantial, arbitrary and regressive redistribution of income and wealth under even mild inflation. But after a quarter century of experience with inflation in postwar Japan, very little is known about these costs of inflation on an empirical basis. Due to the complexity of the evaluation of the redistributional impact on Japan, the present paper analyzes the effects of inflation on individuals or groups as wage earners, debtors and creditors, taxpayers, and holders of real estate. The main results of the present investigation suggest that the Japanese inflation for 1955–75 did not seem to introduce much inequality in the income (flow) account in the economy, but that the inequality between households has appeared more in the wealth (stock) account, especially between the house-owner groups and non-house-owner groups. These observations are mainly derived from the following investigations; (i) the wage lag hypothesis about inflation, even if not wrong, does not seem acceptable when applied to the entire period (1955–75) as well as to each of the five sub-periods; (ii) there has been a substantial transfer of real purchasing power from households to non-financial corporations, and, to a lesser extent, to government entities in the debtor-creditor redistribution; (iii) among households, the most substantial redistribution takes place from the non-houseowners to houseowners with land, because of the huge amount of capital gains from the rapid increase in the price of real estate relative to the prices of other assets or the consumer price index, except for the last three years of rampaging inflation.     

Stylised features of consumer price setting behaviour in Portugal: 1992–2001

This paper identifies the empirical stylized features of consumer price setting behavior in Portugal using two micro-datasets underlying the consumer price index. The main conclusions are: one in every four prices change each month; there is a considerable degree of heterogeneity in price setting practices; prices of goods change more often than prices of services; price reductions are common, as they account to around 40% of total price changes; price changes are, in general, sizeable; finally, the price setting patterns seem to depend on the level of inflation as well as on the type of outlet.

A graphical exposition of a more complete Keynesian system

This paper uses an expanded version of the widely cited Smith model to show the classical natural rate of interest and employment results as a special case of a more general Keynesian model. The model's equilibrium level of employment and real interest rate depend on the inflation rate. The classical results apply to changes in the price level while the Keynesian results apply to changes in the inflation rate. The model assumes inflation is anticipated in equilibrium. Violation of the classical results does not depend on market imperfections such as sticky prices or information costs.     

Inflation,tax rules,and the prices of land and gold

Traditional theory implies that the relative price of consumer goods and of such real assets as land and gold should not be permanently affected by the rate of inflation. A change in the general rate of inflation should, in equilibrium, cause an equal change in the rate of inflation for each asset price. The experience of the past decade has been very different from the predictions of this theory: the prices of land, gold, and other such stores of value have increased by substantially more than the general price level. The present paper presents a simple theoretical model that explains the positive relation between the rate of inflation and the relative price of such real assets. More specifically, in an economy with an income tax, an increase in the expected rate of inflation causes an immediate increase in the relative price of such ‘store of value’ real assets. The behavior of real asset prices discussed in this paper is thus a further example of the non-neutral response of capital markets to inflation in an economy with income taxes.     

THE IMPACT OF CAPITAL GAINS ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME IN BELGIUM

In an earlier paper, we presented estimates of capital gains for a number of categories of assets owned by Belgian households. The purpose of the present paper is to see how the distribution of disposable income between socio-economic groups is modified when one adopts a "broadened" definition of income which includes capital gains corrected for losses of purchasing power.
The main result of the study is that at current prices, the adoption of a broadened definition of income strongly increases disparities between socio-economic groups. However, when one takes into account losses in purchasing power, conclusions differ according to the period analyzed. For the years 1953–68, it appears that the distribution of broadened disposable income is more unequal than the distribution of disposable income. For the years 1969–77 when inflation was high, the adoption of a broadened definition of income has reduced disparities, with the important exception of old age pensioners.     

Profit Differences and Corporate Power: Some Empirical Surprises

Inflation targeting is currently the policy of choice for central banks. This policy invariably targets consumer price inflation, which is only one of many available price level indices (such as prices of new investments and house prices). As there is no stable relationship between these price levels, and as differences in developments between the different price levels might induce destabilizing behavior, there is no reason why “low and stable” consumer price inflation should guarantee monetary and financial stability. Following John Maynard Keynes, a “low and stable” increase of average nominal wages might do a better job. As price levels are designed to estimate the purchasing power of spending power and as income, and spending power are used to not just consume or invest but also to pay down many kinds of (gross) debt, it is advisable to use a joint definition of monetary and financial stability, which combines stable purchasing power of monetary income with a stable ability of households and companies to pay off debts.     

Rigid wage-setting and the effect of a supply shock,fiscal and monetary policies on Chinese economy by a CGE analysis

The purpose of this paper is to present a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Chinese economy which includes rigid wage-setting and integration of real and financial sectors, and to apply it to a quantitative evaluation of the oil price changes and the fiscal and monetary policies. The policy simulation shows whether the wage rate is flexible or rigid is crucial for the evaluation of various policy measures. Furthermore, the fields of application of the model are extended from the industry-related problems to the macroscopic ones such as inflation, stabilization policies and so on.     

Equilibrium determinacy and inflation measures for interest rate rules

Empirical evidence suggests that goods are highly heterogeneous with respect to the degree of price rigidity. We develop a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model to study the equilibrium determinacy properties of interest rate rules that respond to inflation measures differing in their degree of price rigidity. We find that rules responding to a headline measure, which puts some weight on the inflation of the sector with low price stickiness, are more prone to generate endogenous aggregate instability—in the form of fluctuations driven by self-fulfilling expectations and equilibria where fluctuations are unbounded—than rules that respond exclusively to a core measure, which includes only the inflation of the sector with high price stickiness. We discuss how our results depend on the elasticity of substitution across goods, the timing of the policy rule, and reacting to aggregate activity.     

Patterns and Determinants of Price Changes: Analysing Individual Consumer Prices in Austria

Abstract. We provide empirical evidence on the degree and characteristics of price stickiness in Austria by estimating the average frequency of price changes and the duration of price spells from a large dataset of individual price records collected for the computation of the Austrian consumer price index. The mean (median) duration of price spells in Austria amounts to 14 (11) months, but there is considerable heterogeneity across sectors and products. We find that price increases occur only slightly more often than price decreases. For both directions, the average magnitude of price changes is quite large (11% and 14%, respectively). The introduction of the euro cash in January 2002 led to more frequent but, on average, smaller price adjustments than usual. Estimating the probability of a price change in a panel probit model, we find a small but positive effect of the price spell duration on the incidence of price changes. Furthermore, product‐specific inflation, the size and the sign of the last price change and the period of the euro introduction significantly affect the probability of a price change.     

金融资产是否具有通胀对冲功能——基于费雪假说的理论与实证述评

介绍国际上股票、商品和黄金等金融资产收益与通货膨胀之间费雪关系的研究经验。一般来说,在长期,股票、商品和黄金收益与通货膨胀正相关,纯粹的货币增长不会侵蚀股票等金融资产实际价值。然而在短期(1年以内),问题则变得非常难解,实证结果往往取决于数据集的特征,比如通胀的度量、时间序列的频度、不同的国家以及使用何种计量方法。     

The Relationship Between Macroeconomic Variables and Relative Price Variability in Greek Agriculture

The purpose of this paper is to present a measure of relative price variability (RPV) among 53 agricultural products and to explore the relationships between RPV, aggregate inflation rate, and changes in economic activity for the period 1962–1997. We also estimate the effects of expected and unexpected components of inflation on price variability. The results show that changes in inflation rate and economic activity have a strong positive effect on RPV, in addition, expected inflation is found to be an important determinant for explaining price variability.     

Does extracting inflation from stock returns solve the purchasing power parity puzzle?

In a recent study by Chowdhry et al. (American Economic Review 95: 255–276, 2005), they suggest that the empirical failure of relative purchasing power parity (PPP) may be because the official inflation data are too sticky. Thus, after extracting the unobservable pure price inflation from equity markets, they find strong evidence supporting relative PPP in the short run. As a replication study, this paper first replicates their original findings successfully. We further investigate whether long-run relative PPP holds using the pure price inflation data constructed by Chowdhry et al. (2005). After constructing pure real exchange rate series using their pure price inflation data, we implement both unit root and cointegration tests on the pure real exchange rates. According to the test results, the evidence suggests that relative PPP does not hold in the long run. Thus, it may be too early to suggest a resolution of the PPP puzzle.     

An Application of Quah and Vahey’s SVAR Methodology for Estimating Core Inflation in India: A Note

Inflation, calculated as year-on-year per cent change in general price level, represents a combined effect of several types of price changes. The monetary authorities primarily focus to track that part of inflation, which can be effectively monitored and controlled using various monetary instruments. This persistent component of inflation is termed as ‘Core Inflation’, which possesses long-run properties as well as predictive power to forecast inflation. This paper makes use of Quah and Vahey’s definition of core inflation as that component of headline inflation, which has no impact on output in medium to long run and estimates it by placing restrictions on vector auto regression system with inflation and output growth. The analysis is based on monthly data from April 1995 to January 2009. Empirical results showed that in India, during 2006 and 2007, the inflation process was stronger than what headline inflation figures actually depicted and in 2008 the inflationary process has tended to be somewhat weaker than what was observed in headline inflation.

     

Generation and distribution of the total factor productivity gains in US industries

This study estimates productivity gains and their distribution among inputs and outputs for 63 American industries over the period 1987–2012. Using the traditional surplus accounting method, the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth rates are divided into their price change components in order to determine the stakeholders who do or do not receive price advantages.

An initial analysis showed that TFP of US industries increased at an average trend of 0.8% and established that remunerations to employees and firms’ profitability constituted 49% and 39%, respectively, of the accumulated economic surplus from the productivity gains. Suppliers of intermediate inputs retained 12.1% of the surplus. Finally, customers, equipment and structure providers were the losers in the distribution of economic surplus via, respectively, a significant growth of relative final demand prices and a substantial price decrease of these assets.

A second step analysis underlined that industries with high TFP growth rates mainly benefited customers and firms via output price decreases and profitability improvements while industries with low or negative TFP changes hurt customers through significant output price increases. The sectoral level analysis also showed that employees’ remunerations depend only slightly on productivity gains produced within their industrial sectors.     

知识价值增值能力研究——基于黑龙江省上市公司的证据

采用市账率指标测量企业的知识资本,并利用净资产和净利润指标分别测算了企业的有形资产和价值,将线性回归模型和二因素方差分析相结合,构建了知识价值增值能力测量模型。以2010年黑龙江省21家上市公司为样本,对知识与价值增值能力之间的关系进行了实证研究。实证分析结果表明:知识对价值形成的影响是间接的,知识通过促进有形资产的价值增值能力提升而实现价值增值;当企业的资产规模较大时,知识与有形资产在价值增值上存在交互效应,知识能够极大提高有形资产的价值增值能力;当企业资产规模较小时,知识的价值增值能力不显著。     

Oil Price Shocks and Volatility in Australian Stock Returns

This paper examines the effect of oil shocks on return and volatility in the sectors of Australian stock market and finds significant effects for most sectors. For the overall market index, an increase in oil price return significantly reduces return, and an increase in oil price return volatility significantly reduces volatility. An advantage of looking at sector returns rather than a general index of stock returns is that sectors may well differ markedly in how they respond to oil price shocks. The energy and material sectors (as expected) and the financial sector (surprisingly) are out of step (in different ways) with results for the other sectors and for the overall index. A rise in oil price increases returns in the energy and material sectors and an increase in oil price return volatility increases stock return volatility in the financial sector. Explanation for the negative (positive) association between oil return (oil return volatility) and returns (volatility of returns) in the financial sector must be based on the association via lending to and/or holdings of corporate bonds issued by firms with significant exposure to oil price fluctuations and their speculative positions in oil‐related instruments.     

Does it matter (for equilibrium determinacy) what price index the central bank targets?

What inflation rate should the central bank target? We address determinacy issues related to this question in a two-sector model in which prices can differ in equilibrium. We assume that the degree of nominal price stickiness can vary across the sectors and that labor is immobile. The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that a modified Taylor Principle holds in this environment. If the central bank elects to target sector one, and if it responds with a coefficient greater than unity to price movements in this sector, then this policy rule will ensure determinacy across all sectors. The results of this paper have at least two implications. First, the equilibrium-determinacy criterion does not imply a preference to any particular measure of inflation. Second, since the Taylor Principle applies at the sectoral level, there is no need for a Taylor Principle at the aggregate level.     

PRICE DISPERSION,INFLATION, AND WELFARE*

We examine the implications of inflation for both price dispersion and welfare in a monetary search economy. In our economy, if the degree of buyers' incomplete information about prices is fixed, both price dispersion and real prices are increasing in inflation. As the inflation rate approaches the Friedman rule, both price dispersion and welfare losses vanish. If households choose the number of prices to observe, then the optimal inflation rate may exceed the Friedman rule as inflation induces search and, up to a point, raises welfare by eroding market power.