Domestic and International Sources of Inflation in Developing Countries: Some Evidence from the Monetary Approach

Using the monetary approach, this paper examines empirically the causes of inflation in twenty-five developing countries. In addition to money supply, the underlying money demand function and foreign exchange rates are taken into account in the inflationary process. The lag structures are determined by Akaike's FPE criterion and the exogeneity assumptions are assessed by Granger-type causality tests. The results suggest that the monetary approach provides adequate explanation of inflation across all countries examined. Besides changes in expected inflation and foreign exchange rates, movements in base money in these countries have significantly contributed to their inflationary pressures. [134, 431]     

Inflation,money, interest rate,exchange rate,and casuality: the case of Egypt,Morocco, and Tunisia

This study provides further evidence of the inflationary efects of the rates of growth of money supply, gross domestic product, efective exchange rate, and imported inflation for Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia using quarterly data from 1964 to 1990. In addition, it examines the Granger causality between inflation and money supply as well as between inflation and the real exchange rate in the countries under consideration. Most of the results are consistent with extant theory and empirical evidence.     

Inflation Tax and Substitution Between Domestic and Foreign Assets: Evidence from Central-Eastern Europe

Dominant factors in determining real money holdings in Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia during a transition period characterized by high inflation are analyzed. Two hypotheses are tested. Cagan's model suggests that inflation-adjusted money balances are influenced almost exclusively by inflationary expectations. A competing model suggests that under highly inflationary conditions there is an incentive for agents to substitute foreign for domestic assets in their portfolios because of the higher expected return. Inflation expectation is a dominant factor in Poland. The expected return to holding foreign assets dominates in Hungary. Both factors have played important roles in Slovenia.     

货币政策、外部冲击与通货膨胀

利用2001年1月—2013年6月的月度数据,构建DCC-MVGARCH模型分析用货币供应量表征的我国内部因素和用汇率和国际原油价格表征的外部因素对我国通货膨胀率的动态影响。研究结果表明:我国通货膨胀既源于内部调整,也受到外部冲击的影响;内部因素中的货币供应量增长率是影响我国通货膨胀水平的主要决定因素;相对而言,外部因素对通货膨胀水平的影响不大。     

中国货币供给与通货膨胀的关联性研究

关于货币供给与通货膨胀的关联性,学者们还没有形成一致的看法.理论上,货币供给与通货膨胀具有一定的关联性.通货膨胀有需求拉动型和成本推动型,在通货膨胀的原因中有“货币因素”,也有“非货币因素”.实证检验表明:中国货币供应量与物价指数不存在长期的稳定均衡关系,但货币供应量是物价指数的格兰杰原因,反之则不然.事实上,中国通货膨胀或通货膨胀压力一方面是与货币供给有关,另一方面还与结构性因素有关.因此,要实现中国经济的低通胀运行:一是实行总量均衡和结构合理的货币供给模式;二是采取更有效的货币政策;三是推进经济结构调整,实现国际收支平衡;四是深化金融体系改革,增强中央银行货币控制能力;五是进行汇率机制改革;六是通过财政政策调整供需结构.     

An Investigation into the Major Causes 01 Australia's Recent Inflation and Some Policy Implications*

This paper investigates the major causes of Australia's recent inflation with special emphasis on the 1970s and early 1980s A general model of inflation is formulated based upon a vector auto-regression The main empirical finding is that increases in wages and import prices and more recently in money have been significant causal factors of Australia's inflationary experience. Government current expenditure is found to contribute passively to cost-push inflation     

Exchange rate reform and its inflationary consequences: an empirical analysis for China

In examining China's exchange rate policy in the reforming years, the study finds empirical evidence of its long-run inflationary consequences, but the effects appear not to be sizable. In the short run, while changes in the devaluation rate are positively correlated with the increase in the growth rate of inflation, the inflation inertia is also modest. The moderate inflationary cost of devaluations provides some explanation of the smooth transition of exchange rate policy regime in China and the authorities' ability to put more weight on external competitiveness.     

Is Inflation Always and Everywhere a Monetary Phenomenon?*

Using a sample of about 160 countries over the last 30 years, we test for the quantity theory relationship between money and inflation. When analysing the full sample of countries, we find a strong positive relation between long‐run inflation and the money growth rate. The relation is not proportional, however. The strong link between inflation and money growth is almost wholly due to the presence of high‐(or hyper‐) inflation countries in the sample. The relationship between inflation and money growth for low‐inflation countries (on average less than 10% per annum over the last 30 years) is weak.     

Granger causality of the inflation–growth mirror in accession countries*

The paper presents a model in which the exogenous money supply causes changes in the inflation rate and the output growth rate. While inflation and growth rate changes occur simultaneously, the inflation acts as a tax on the return to human capital and in this sense induces the growth rate decrease. Shifts in the model's credit sector productivity cause shifts in the income velocity of money that can break the otherwise stable relationship between money, inflation, and output growth. Applied to two accession countries, Hungary and Poland, a VAR system is estimated for each that incorporates endogenously determined multiple structural breaks. Results indicate Granger causality positively from money to inflation and negatively from inflation to growth for both Hungary and Poland, as suggested by the model, although there is some feedback to money for Poland. Three structural breaks are found for each country that are linked to changes in velocity trends, and to the breaks found in the other country.     

The Measurement of the Utilisation Efficiency of External Debt Funds and Its Influencing Factors

This paper uses stochastic frontier analysis to measure the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds, and identifies what factors actually influence the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds. Measurements show that in both developing and developed countries, the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds shows a downward trend; this downward trend is more obvious in developed countries. Empirical analysis found that the trade deficit rate, the trade openness, the ratio of fiscal revenue to gross domestic product (GDP), and the inflation rate have a significant negative effect on the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds. The ratio of money and quasi money (M2) to GDP, the ratio of the population aged 15–65 to total population, the ratio of industry value‐added to GDP, and the investment growth rate have a significant positive effect on the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds. Furthermore, under the condition of high ratio of the population aged 15–65 to total population, an increase in the ratio of the population aged 15–65 to total population will have a larger effect on improving the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds. Under the condition of high trade deficit rate, an increase in trade deficit rate will have a bigger effect on decreasing the utilisation efficiency of external debt funds.     

IDENTIFYING THE SHOCKS DRIVING INFLATION IN CHINA

The time profile of inflation in China resembles the one experienced in major industrial countries. Given the uncertainty surrounding the sources of economic shocks, the present paper compares results from three sets of alternative identification conditions. Our principal finding is that inflation in China has been primarily driven by monetary factors. Although aggregate supply factors might have pushed inflation to cross the threshold leading to deflation, monetary policy is primarily responsible for Chinese inflationary outcomes.     

Money Demand in an EU Accession Country: A VECM Study of Croatia

The paper estimates the money demand in Croatia using monthly data from 1994 to 2002. A failure of the Fisher equation is found, and adjustment to the standard money‐demand function is made to include the inflation rate as well as the nominal interest rate. In a two‐equation cointegrated system, a stable money demand shows rapid convergence back to equilibrium after shocks. This function performs better than an alternative using the exchange rate instead of the inflation rate as in the ‘pass‐through’ literature on exchange rates. The results provide a basis for inflation rate forecasting and suggest the ability to use inflation targeting goals in transition countries during the EU accession process. Finding a stable money demand also limits the scope for central bank ‘inflation bias’.     

Food supply and inflation

The paper presents an analytic version of the Latin American structuralist theory of inflation. It emphasizes the difference between the productive sectors of the economy and draws attention to the fact that the inflationary process is closely linked to inconsistent claims for shares in income. It describes a Keynesian economy with two (three) sectors. Real desired wages are rigid. Money is passive. It is shown that the structuralist hypotheses are capable of generating disequilibria that can lead to constantly rising prices without any built in mechanism to offset them. Steady inflation can only persist if workers allow their real wage to be kept below target. As the workers try to catch on, the model will blow up: an accelerating inflation can be observed in many Latin American countries during periods when wage settlements, aimed at restoring inflation losses, escaped the government control. The paper also explores the implications of foreign trade: it shows that, under structuralist hypotheses, external disequilibria cannot be corrected through exchange rate devaluations alone, and it examines the stagflationary impacts of an increase in the price of imported intermediates.     

Commodity Prices and the Dynamics of Inflation in Commodity‐Exporting Nations: Evidence from Australia and Canada*

A commodity‐price boom is under way. What does this boom mean for inflation in countries with substantial net commodity exports? The answer depends on movements in commodity prices, changes in foreign exchange rates and the determinants of domestic price inflation. We estimate equations to provide indications of the strength of each of these forces for both Australia and Canada. The results show that world commodity prices move pro‐cyclically with world industrial production and that rates of change in commodity prices are directly related to domestic inflation in both countries. However, there is an offsetting impact of exchange‐rate changes, which is strong enough in the case of Australia, but not Canada, to substantially eliminate the inflationary impact of a commodity‐price boom.     

Multiple reserve requirements in a monetary growth model

Summary. This paper considers a monetary growth model in which banks provide liquidity, and in which a government finances a deficit by printing money and selling bonds. In this context, I examine the possibility that the government may want to impose binding reserve requirements on banks' holdings of both money and government bonds. Conditions are established under which doing so increases steady state welfare and reduces the scope for indeterminacies. Furthermore, under a binding system of multiple reserve requirements we have that money is superneutral. On the other hand, if reserve requirements are imposed on cash holdings alone, increases in the steady state inflation rate adversely affect capital accumulation and long run real activity. Thus systems of multiple binding reserve requirements can insulate real activity from the consequences of inflationary taxation. Received: June 30, 2000; revised version: January 31, 2001     

Money and Inflation: International Evidence Based on Cointegration Theory

This study investigates the relationship between money and inflation using cointegration tests. For a broad sample of countries, the paper finds that most time series data underlying a typical monetarist model are nonstationary, indicating that it is necessary to appropriately transform the data in order to render the confidence tests reliable. Our principal finding is that money and inflation are related only in countries with high inflation [E 31]     

Output gains from accelerating core inflation

Previous research finds that the analysis of sacrifice ratios–namely, identifying disinflation episodes, calculating the sacrifice ratio, and looking at its determinants–changes substantially when one moves from headline to core inflation. This paper examines whether similar findings are obtained when examining benefice ratios, and we find arguably even greater differences. Specifically, we see that headline inflation identifies far more inflationary episodes since the 1990s than core inflation does. Furthermore, Jordan’s (1997) argument that the speed of inflation is a negative and significant determinant of benefice ratios does not hold when we move from headline to core inflation, both within the U.S. and also across the OECD. We also find strong evidence that the initial level of GDP at the onset of an inflationary episode matters. In particular, output gains from accelerating inflation appear only to be beneficial for OECD countries that start with a low level of GDP. Conversely, countries that start with a high level of GDP should not pursue additional output gains from allowing a rise in inflation.     

The effect of inflation on growth

The paper examines the effect of inflation on growth in transition countries. It presents panel data evidence for 13 transition countries over the 1990–2003 period; it uses a fixed effects panel approach to account for possible bias from correlations among the unobserved effects and the observed country heterogeneity. The results find a strong, robust, negative effect on growth of inflation or its standard deviation, and one that appears to decline in magnitude as the inflation rate increases, as seen for OECD countries. And the results include a role for a normalized money demand in affecting growth, as well as for a convergence variable, a trade variable and a government share variable. Robustness of the baseline single‐equation model is examined by expanding this into a three‐equation simultaneous system of output growth, inflation and money demand that allows for possible simultaneity bias in the baseline model.     

Inflationary expectations and monetary policy: evidence from Bangladesh

This article first estimates inflationary expectations using a Blanchard–Quah VAR model by decomposing the nominal interest rate into expected inflation and the ex ante real interest rate. Then I utilize this expected inflation along with other macroeconomic variables as inputs to the monetary policy function in a recursive VAR model to identify exogenous policy shocks. To calculate inflationary expectations, I assume that ex ante real interest rate shocks do not have a long-run effect on the nominal interest rate. This article finds that the public expects lower inflation for the future during periods of high inflation. Estimated results from the recursive VAR suggest that a contractionary policy shock increases the real interest rate, appreciates domestic currency, and lowers inflationary expectations and industrial output. However, I find a lagged policy response from Bangladesh Bank to higher inflationary expectations.     

Conflict and inflation in industrial countries

This paper examines expirically the conflict theory of inflation, using a sample of pooled time-series, cross-section data over the period 1971–87 for 10 industrial countries: USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden. To this end a wage-price adjustment model based on the ideas of distributional conflict in wage formation and mark-up pricing in goods markets is set out. The model provides a satisfactory explanation of the inflationary process in industrial countries. It is shown that conflict between workers and capitalists over the distribution of income exerts a significant influence on the pattern of inflation. Import prices, inflationary expectations and labour market conditions are also important, with the latter acting as a regulator of class conflict.