The (de-)anchoring of inflation expectations: New evidence from the euro area

Well-anchored inflation expectations are a key factor for achieving economic stability. This paper provides new empirical results on the anchoring of long-term inflation expectations in the euro area. In line with earlier evidence, we find that euro area inflation expectations have been anchored until fall 2011. Since then, however, they respond significantly to macroeconomic news. Our results obtained from multiple endogenous break point tests suggest that euro area inflation expectations have remained de-anchored ever since.     

Inflation expectations in India: Learning from household tendency surveys

We use a large household survey that is being conducted by the Reserve Bank of India since 2005 to estimate the dynamics of aggregate inflation expectations over a volatile inflation regime. A simple average of the quantitative responses produces biased estimates of the official inflation data. We therefore estimate expectations by quantifying the reported directional responses. We perform quantification by using the hierarchical ordered probit model, in addition to the balance statistic. We find that the quantified expectations from qualitative forecasts track the actual inflation rate better than the averages of the quantitative forecasts, highlighting the filtering role of qualitative tendency surveys. We also report estimates of the disagreement among households. The proposed approach is particularly suitable in emerging economies, where inflation tends to be high and volatile.     

Understanding survey-based inflation expectations

This paper examines the behavior of inflation expectations in the United States. After documenting deviations from rationality in survey-based inflation expectations, I apply a model selection algorithm, boosting, to the inflation expectations of households and professionals. The algorithm builds a regression-like model of expected inflation using a large panel of macroeconomic data as possible covariates. The algorithm achieves a very strong fit in-sample, and finds that the inflation expectations of households correlate with different macroeconomic variables from the expectations of professionals. However, it is difficult to exploit the predictability of inflation expectations in order to improve forecasts of the realized inflation.     

Modelling the inflation process in transition economies: Empirical comparison of Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic

This paper starts from the observation that inflation in transition economies appears to be persistently high and volatile and attempts to provide some empirical characterisation of the inflation process in three such transition economies: Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic. We first consider the role of monetary growth as a major causal factor for inflation in these economies, and argue that the evidence provides rather weak support for the causal relationship. We then propose a transition economy cost-plus model and estimate this using the equilibrium-correction modelling (ECM) strategy augmented by introduction of a number of transitory factors and changes in the internal structure of the real economy which we believe may have had a significant impact on inflation in these economies. We show that this approach enables us to account for long-run inflation in these economies from the early 1980s to the present despite the turbulence of the latter part of the sample period. Our results support wage and exchange rate based inflation policies.     

Forecasting inflation in Latin America with core measures

We explore the ability of core inflation to predict headline CPI annual inflation for a sample of eight developing economies in Latin America over the period January 1995–May 2017. Our in-sample and out-of-sample results are roughly consistent in providing robust evidence of predictability in four of the countries in our sample. Mixed evidence is found for the other four countries. The bulk of the out-of-sample evidence of predictability concentrates on the short horizons of one and six months. In contrast, at the longest horizon of 24 months, we only find out-of-sample evidence of predictability for two countries: Chile and Colombia, with robust results only for the latter. This is both important and challenging, given that the monetary authorities in our sample of developing countries are currently implementing or are taking steps toward the future implementation of inflation targeting regimes, which are based heavily on long-run inflation forecasts.     

Openness and inflation volatility: Panel data evidence

Trade openness can affect inflation volatility via the incentives faced by policy-makers or the structure of production and consumption, but the sign of this effect, as predicted from economic theory, is ambiguous. This paper provides evidence for a negative effect of openness on inflation volatility using a dynamic panel model that controls for the endogeneity of openness and the effects of both average inflation and the exchange rate regime. Our results offer one explanation for the recent decline in inflation volatility observed in many countries. The relationship is shown to be strongest amongst developing and emerging market economies, and we argue that the mechanisms linking openness and inflation volatility are likely to be strongest amongst this group of countries.     

New tips from TIPS: Identifying inflation expectations and the risk premia of break-even inflation

This paper decomposes the break-even inflation rates derived from inflation-indexed bonds into inflation risk premia, liquidity risk premia, and inflation expectations. I estimate a common factor model with autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (ARCH) errors that extracts co-movements from twenty-two monthly and quarterly indicators to identify these three components. The results indicate that the sharp declines in the 10-year and 5-year break-even inflation rates in 2009 reflect a substantial increase in liquidity risk rather than a decrease in inflation expectations. Break-even inflation rates underestimate inflation expectations over nearly the entire sample due to the liquidity risk premia carried by the inflation indexed bond yields. Also, the model-implied inflation expectations show better forecast performance for the average annual inflation rates than raw break-even inflation rates, the Survey of Professional Forecasters, and the Surveys of Consumers inflation forecasts.     

STABILISATION POLICY,RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS AND PRICE‐LEVEL VERSUS INFLATION TARGETING: A SURVEY

We survey literature comparing inflation targeting (IT) and price‐level targeting (PT) as macroeconomic stabilisation policies. Our focus is on New Keynesian models and areas that have seen significant developments since Ambler's (2009, Price‐level targeting and stabilisation policy: a survey. Journal of Economic Surveys 23(5): 974–997) survey: optimal monetary policy; the zero lower bound; financial frictions and transition costs of adopting a PT regime. Ambler's conclusion that PT improves social welfare in New Keynesian models is fairly robust, but we note an interesting split in the literature: PT consistently outperforms IT in models where policymakers commit to simple Taylor‐type rules, but results in favour of PT when policymakers minimise loss functions are overturned with small deviations from the baseline model. Since the beneficial effects of PT appear to hang on the joint assumption that agents are rational and the economy New Keynesian, we discuss survey and experimental evidence on rational expectations and the applied macro literature on the empirical performance of New Keynesian models. Overall, the evidence is not clear‐cut, but we note that New Keynesian models can pass formal statistical tests against macro data and that models with rational expectations outperform those with behavioural expectations (i.e. heuristics) in direct statistical tests. We therefore argue that policymakers should continue to pay attention to PT.     

Rigid payment breaking,default spread and yields of Chinese treasury bonds

While the existence of implicit payment guarantees has long characterized Chinese bond market, recent market oriented reforms in the country have gradually broken this regime. In this context, we examine how the breaking of rigid payment regime influences the yields of Chinese treasury bonds. We argue that the rigid payment breaking affects the yields of treasury bonds by influencing investors’ setup of default risk premiums and the demand for “flight-to-quality” and “flight-to-liquidity”. Our analysis of the daily data of Chinese treasury bond transactions over the period of 2009–2019 support our theoretical arguments, indicating that rigid payment breaking has a negative impact on the yields of Chinese treasury bonds. However, this impact is heterogeneous across the bonds with different maturities and the significant effect exists only for medium and long-term treasury bonds. Our findings advance understanding of how the breaking of rigid payment regime influences the yields of financial products, providing guidelines for how investors should optimize their investment portfolios in the bond market.     

Asset price targeting in an open economy with cognitive limitations: The best for macroeconomic and financial stability?

The choices of policy targets and the formation of agent expectations have been critical issues addressed by monetary policy management since the financial crisis of 2008. This paper evaluates macroeconomic stability in a new Keynesian open economy in which agents experience both cognitive limitations and asset market volatility. The (im)perfect credibility of various monetary policies (e.g., a Taylor-type rule with- or without asset price targeting, strict domestic inflation targeting, strict CPI inflation targeting, and exchange rate peg) may lead agents to react according to their expectation rules, and thus create various degrees of booms and busts in output and inflation. Simulations confirm that a Taylor-type CPI inflation targeting including an asset price target is the best choice. In contrast, the business cycles induced by Keynesian “animal spirits” are enhanced by strict inflation targeting. Furthermore, a credible exchange rate pegging system with an international reserve pooling arrangement can improve social welfare and stability in an open economy, even though its absolute value of the loss function is slightly lower than a Taylor-type CPI inflation targeting including an asset price target.     

Is inflation driven by survey-based,VAR-based or myopic expectations? An empirical assessment from US real-time data

The relative importance of survey-based, VAR-based or myopic expectations is evaluated in accounting for US inflation dynamics in a New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) setting. Our contribution is threefold. First, we estimate the NKPC with both final and real-time vintage data in order to control for large revisions in the real GDP data. Second, we distinguish between two different series for VAR-based inflation forecasts—derived by a recursive or rolling-window method—to account for changes in the conduct and transmission mechanisms of US monetary policy after World War II. Third, joint restrictions are tested in the NKPC to assess whether one of the expectational variables is able, on its own, to capture inflation dynamics. On a statistical basis, we find that there is no clear-cut winner between VAR- and survey-based inflation expectations. Most of our estimated NKPC variants conclude that survey inflation expectations tend to have the largest numerical weight. Nevertheless, the difference between VAR- and survey-based expectations’ estimated coefficients is not statistically significant. Moreover, myopic expectations do not play any significant role in the majority of the estimated NKPC variants.     

The paradox of rising wage growth and falling inflation

• ? Strong labour markets and rising wages in advanced economies stand in sharp contrast to recent declines in economists’ inflation forecasts and market expectations. In our view, though, these developments are not necessarily contradictory. Even if wage growth edges higher, we think demand factors will limit any pick‐up in prices. Instead, we expect firms’ margins will be squeezed.
• ? Although the labour share has risen more sharply than we had expected over the past couple of years, we are sceptical that this will translate into substantially stronger underlying inflation. Not only has the rise been small, it has been employment rather than wages that has surprised to the upside. The strength of employment is probably more about firms’ production preferences than workers’ capitalising on a stronger negotiating position.
• ? True, wages adjusted for productivity now look high by historical standards. But neither theory or empirical evidence suggests that this must inevitably lead to stronger CPI inflation in the short‐term. Our forecast for flat wage growth in 2019 and the absence of strong cost pressures elsewhere are also a comfort.
• ? Inflation tends to be more responsive to demand indicators – and the recent GDP growth soft patch suggests any further pick‐up in underlying inflation pressures will be limited (see Chart below).
• ? More generally, we think that the consensus view on inflation for the key advanced economies is high. Market‐based inflation expectations are typically lower than our own, which may reflect the perception that inflation risks are skewed to the downside. Positive economic surprises could lead downside risks to narrow, but ageing expansions and secular stagnation worries suggest this is unlikely, limiting any future pick‐up in bond yields.

     

预期、混合菲利普斯曲线与中国通货膨胀动态特征

将货币因素与输入性因素（如汇率、国际石油价格等）引入新凯恩斯混合菲利普斯曲线框架构建高阶滞后的混合菲利普斯曲线模型,并利用1995年第1季度至2013年第2季度的数据进行实证分析,结果显示：总需求变化对我国通货膨胀率的影响很小,而货币因素与输入性因素（如汇率以及国际大宗商品价格变化）成为影响我国通货膨胀率的重要因素;我国通货膨胀主要受到前瞻性预期的影响,而通胀惯性对通货膨胀水平的影响不大;相对而言,货币因素对我国通货膨胀具有最重要的影响。     

Band or point inflation targeting? An experimental approach

We conduct laboratory experiments with human subjects to test the rationale of adopting a band versus point inflation targeting regime. Within the standard New Keynesian model, we evaluate the macroeconomic performances of both regimes according to the strength of shocks affecting the economy. We find that when the economy faces small uncorrelated shocks, the level of inflation as well as its volatility are significantly lower in a band targeting regime, while the output gap and interest rate levels and volatility are significantly lower in a point targeting regime with tolerance bands. However, when the economy faces large uncorrelated shocks, choosing the suitable inflation targeting regime is irrelevant because both regimes lead to comparable performances. These findings stand in contrast to those of the literature and question the relevance of clarifying a mid-point target within the bands, especially in emerging market economies more inclined to large and frequent shocks.     

Fitting observed inflation expectations

The paper provides evidence on the extent to which inflation expectations generated by a standard Christiano et al. (2005)/Smets and Wouters (2003)-type DSGE model are in line with what observed in the data. We consider three variants of this model that differ in terms of the behavior of, and the public's information on, the central banks' inflation target, allegedly a key determinant of inflation expectations. We find that (i) time-variation in the inflation target is needed to capture the evolution of expectations during the post-Volcker period; (ii) the variant where agents have Imperfect Information is strongly rejected by the data; (iii) inflation expectations appear to contain information that is not present in the other series used in estimation, and (iv) none of the models fully capture the dynamics of this variable.     

Adoption of inflation targeting and tax revenue performance in emerging market economies: An empirical investigation

This paper investigates whether the adoption of inflation targeting (IT), by strengthening central bank independence and maintaining inflation at low levels, has encouraged the governments of emerging economies to improve the collection of domestic tax revenue in order to recoup the loss of seigniorage revenue. Using the propensity score matching methodology, a micro-econometric methodology recently used in macroeconomics, we evaluate the ‘treatment effect’ of IT on fiscal mobilization in emerging countries that have adopted this monetary policy framework. Our empirical analysis, conducted on a sample of 59 countries (19 IT and 40 non-IT countries) for the period from 1980 to 2009, shows that on average IT adoption has had a large and significant positive effect on public revenue collection. Our results are confirmed by extensive robustness tests.     

当前我国通货膨胀成因及其对策

为应对国际金融危机，我国实施了四万亿元的刺激政策。在货币供应量和信贷额大量扩张的背景下，市场上注入了过多的流动性，产生了明显的通胀预期。我国是否会发生通货膨胀是由多种要素共同决定的。文中对2013年来物价上涨、通货膨胀等现象进行分析，阐述通货膨胀的涵义和性质，探究其成因，提出治理的政策建议。     

Impact of macroeconomic surprises on the Brazilian yield curve and expected inflation

This study investigates how unexpected announcements in Brazilian and U.S. macroeconomic indicators affect the term structure of nominal interest rates, as well as implicit inflation expectations and real interest rates. Using daily data from March 2005 to December 2012, we employ an extended Vector Error Correction Model to take into account nonstationarity and the long-term equilibrium among different maturities of those curves. We found empirical evidence that macroeconomic surprises, domestic (Brazilian) and external (U.S. American), which lead the market to believe that there might be a higher risk of inflation or an overheated economy, raise nominal interest rates, implicit expected inflation and real interest rates. Surprisingly, in relation to the efficient-market hypothesis, we found that some macroeconomic surprises have a lagged effect on the yield curves. We also tested the impact of the global financial crisis of 2007–09 and found that the crisis affected significantly the direction and magnitude of the responses to macroeconomic news.     

UK term structure decompositions at the zero lower bound

This paper employs a zero lower bound (ZLB) consistent shadow‐rate model to decompose UK nominal yields into expectation and term premium components. Compared to a standard affine term structure model, it performs relatively better in a ZLB setting by capturing the stylized facts of the yield curve. The ZLB model is then exploited to estimate inflation expectations and risk premiums. This entails jointly pricing and decomposing nominal and real UK yields. We find evidence that medium‐ and long‐term inflation expectations are contained within narrower bounds since the early 1990s, suggesting monetary policy credibility improved after the introduction of inflation targeting.     

Evaluating inflation targeting based on the distribution of inflation and inflation volatility

In this paper the Financial Development Index (FDI) is used to rank 57 of the world's leading financial systems. Its calculation is based on the following 7 economic pillars: (1) Institutional environment, (2) Business environment, (3) Financial stability, (4) Banking financial services, (5) Non-banking financial services, (6) Financial markets, and (7) Financial access. Pillar (4) is constructed from bond markets, stock markets, foreign exchange markets, and derivative markets. Pillar (5) includes a country's IPO activity, namely the IPO market share, IPO proceeds amount, and IPOs share of world IPOs. The stock market index provides a short-term account of financial activities, whereas the FDI provides a long-term broader account of the financial structure and health of an economy. As the performance and success of a given monetary policy would less likely be judged on short-term dynamics, it seems sensible to use the annual FDI as one of several economic and country attributes in a policy evaluation of Inflation Targeting. The paper offers a potential outcomes analysis of the impact of inflation targeting on inflation and inflation volatility, and focuses on advanced economies that adopt ⿿inflation targeting⿿ as a formal monetary policy. In order to deal with the counterfactual question, namely what would be the inflation rate for an adopting country had it not adopted this policy, the paper offers a new matching technique that subsumes the traditional propensity scores methods as a special case. The paper has different proposals for assessing ⿿matching⿿ based on the whole distribution of any ⿿scores⿿. Additionally, the paper goes beyond the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) and examines the entire distribution of inflation and its ⿿variability⿿. It is found that the adoption of inflation targeting has helped lower inflation (not just the mean) for the targeting countries. However, it is shown that exact numerical quantification of this policy effect is as highly subjective as choosing ideal social welfare functions. The paper also finds no evidence of a larger gain for ⿿late adopters⿿ of inflation targeting. As for inflation variability, there is some robust evidence of small and often statistically insignificant reduction in variability due to targeting.