Inflation Targeting,Fiscal Policy,and the Exchange Rate Regime

Until recently, Turkey’s economy was characterized by high inflation, undisciplined public finance management, and a fragile banking system and experienced multiple economic crises. After the economy was hit by another crisis in 2001, the central bank became independent, adopted inflation targeting as the monetary policy framework, and implemented reforms to adopt a more stringent fiscal policy. Inflation rates decreased to single-digit levels within 3 years after the independence of the central bank. This article analyzes the end of the high inflation period in the context of monetary and fiscal policy interactions within a Markov-Switching Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model in which monetary and fiscal policies are allowed to switch between different regimes.     

从通货膨胀目标制看货币政策透明度建设

近年来，通货膨胀目标制已成为一种新的货币政策框架，而通货膨胀目标制的显著优点在于能通过增强货币政策的透明度，提高政策的可信度，进而提高货币政策的有效性。提高货币政策的透明度正在成为一种国际趋势。因此．本文通过借鉴实施通货膨胀目标制的西方发达国家的成功经验，探讨我国应如何加强货币政策透明度的建设，提高货币政策有效性。     

Fiscal Dominance and Inflation Targeting: Lessons from Turkey

In the aftermath of the 2000-2001 crisis in Turkey, the banking sector was in turbulence, requiring immediate action. The rescue operation significantly increased the public debt ratio with respect to gross domestic product. At the beginning of 2002, the central bank of Turkey announced that it was going to implement an implicit inflation-targeting regime. The fiscal dominance caused by the high debt ratio severely constrained the conduct of monetary policy. Other obstacles to the conduct of monetary policy included a high level of exchange rate pass-through, inflation inertia, and a weak banking sector. This paper offers an account of the monetary policy experience of Turkey in the postcrisis period and provides lessons for policymakers in other emerging markets.     

通货膨胀目标制宏观经济效应之“非对称性”的验证

已有的相关研究似乎显示通货膨胀目标制的宏观经济效应在工业国与新兴市场国之间存在着非对称性(即通胀目标制在新兴市场国表现出具有改善一国宏观经济的积极政策效果,但在工业国却缺乏足够证据来证实这一点)。本文以采用通胀目标制的所有国家为考察对象,选择通货膨胀率、GDP成长率及其各自的波动四变量作为刻画一国宏观经济运行态势的代表性指标,运用DID方法并结合Bootstrap检验对此进行验证。研究结果表明此非对称性确实存在,此结论对同为新兴经济体、并且货币政策面临变革和转型需要的我国具有一定的政策启示。     

Inflation Targeting and Exchange Rate Pass-Through: The Turkish Experience

Using a vector autoregression model, we show that the pass-through from imported inflation to domestic inflation has weakened substantially and slowed after the adoption of inflation targeting in Turkey. We argue that this finding is due mainly to several features—such as enhanced credibility of the central bank, changing behavior of the exchange rate, and a shift in expectation formation—possibly acquired by the implementation of a successful inflation-targeting regime. These observations suggest that adopting an inflation-targeting regime in itself may help to reduce exchange rate pass-through.     

Inflation Targeting as Constrained Discretion

This paper suggests a simple framework for modeling inflation targeting as constrained discretion. Although it is widely claimed that inflation targeting has been successful in maintaining low and stable inflation, an announcement of an inflation target does not by itself mean that central bankers are precommiting to how they conduct monetary policy. In comparison to the assumption of many theoretical studies, central banks conduct monetary policy in a discretionary fashion and rarely precommit to a rule in reality. Therefore, the central bank in this paper is modeled as discretionary, yet faced with a constraint, that an average of future inflation over a certain horizon should be kept on or near the preannounced target level. It is natural to add this constraint to the central banker’s optimization problem, since inflation targeting involves one way or another an evaluation of the performance over a certain horizon. So it is argued that the better outcome of inflation targeting does not come from a commitment but from “constrained discretion.” This paper also sheds some light on optimal targeting horizon.     

Inflation Targeting Does Not Matter: Another Look at OECD Sacrifice Ratios

Recently in this journal, Gonçalves and Carvalho (2009) concluded that inflation targeters were able to bring inflation down at less cost than nontargeters (p. 242). This comment shows that their conclusion is not robust but instead is the result of comparing a particular subset of inflation targeting (IT) disinflations with nonsimultaneous disinflations that occurred under very different macroeconomic conditions. In their sample, simple extensions such as justifiably varying the treatment group of IT disinflations, to control for common time‐varying effects or to control for the Maastricht Treaty effects, suggest that IT does not matter.     

Stock Returns Under High Inflation and Interest Rates: Evidence from the Brazilian Market

We analyze the relationship of high inflation and interest rates with stock returns in Brazil from May 1986 to May 2011, during which Brazil experienced subperiods of both high inflation (May 1986-June 1994) and relative monetary stability (July 1994-May 2011). The result in the total period is dominated by high inflation volatility, and the findings suggest a bidirectional relationship between stock returns and inflation. During the high-inflation subperiod, interest rates are relevant to explain future changes in inflation and stock returns. Under low inflation, movements in interest rates are better anticipated by equity investors, suggesting higher market efficiency than in high-inflation circumstances.     

结构性通货膨胀解析——基于当前中国通货膨胀问题的思考

本文从总需求和总供给的经济结构两个层面对我国通货膨胀形势进行了剖析,表明我国当前源于总需求层面的通货膨胀压力已为中央银行的宏观调控锁定,目前的通货膨胀主要来源于经济结构层面。本文用部门间CPI的离散程度来表示结构性通货膨胀的数量特征,运用部门瓶颈模型分析了其形成机制,表明其根源在于农业部门发展的相对滞后,进而从收入分配角度解释了结构性通货膨胀的自我维持机制。在此基础上本文就抑制通货膨胀问题提出了相应的政策建议。     

Stock Prices and Inflation: New Evidence from the Pacific-Basin Countries

This paper investigates the statistical relationship between stock prices and inflation in nine countries in the Pacific-Basin. On balance, regression analysis on the nine markets shows negative relationships between stock returns in real terms and inflation in the short run, while co-integration tests on the same markets display a positive relationship between the same variables over the long run. The time path of the response of stock prices plotted against corresponding changes in consumer price indices validates this dichotomy in time-related response patterns of stock prices to inflation; namely, a blip of negative responses at the beginning changes to a positive response over a longer period of time. Stock prices in Asia, like those in the U.S. and Europe, appear to reflect a time-varying memory associated with inflation shocks that make stock portfolios a reasonably good hedge against inflation in the long run.     

Fiscal Adjustment and Inflation Targeting in Less Developed Countries

Inflation targeting may not be viable in less developed countries (LDCs) where policymakers rely too heavily on cuts in infrastructure investment to balance the budget. Using a mix of analytical and numerical methods, we demonstrate that the equilibrium ceases to be saddle point stable under active policy when infrastructure cuts account for 30–70% of fiscal adjustment and the return on infrastructure exceeds a comparatively low threshold value. The result is robust to the form of the Taylor rule, the degree of real wage flexibility, the initial level of debt, the choice of a balanced‐budget or debt‐targeting rule, and the q‐elasticity of private investment spending.     

Inflation Targeting,Recursive Inattentiveness,and Heterogeneous Beliefs

We consider a monetary authority that provides an explicit inflation target in order to align expectations with the policy objective. However, biased perceptions of the target may arise due to imperfect information flows. We allow agents to revise expectations over time and we model their recursive choice among prediction strategies as an optimization problem under rational inattention. We then investigate whether a simple policy rule can steer the economy toward the targeted equilibrium. Our findings suggest that determinacy under rational expectations may not be sufficient to reach the target. Instead, monetary policy should be fine‐tuned to correct agents' biased beliefs.     

Implicit Inflation and Risk Premiums in the Brazilian Fixed Income Market

The breakeven inflation, the differential between nominal and real yields of bonds, is often used as a predictor of future inflation. The model presented here decomposes this interest rate differential into a risk premium and implicit inflation using a parametric formulation based on no-arbitrage conditions using nominal and indexed yield curves in Brazil, via an affine model of the Nelson–Siegel family. The measures of implicit inflation obtained from the model are shown to be unbiased estimators of future inflation for short horizons and carry some information for long horizons, and the model forecasts are superior to market surveys.     

Testing for persistence in mutual fund performance and the ex-post verification problem: evidence from the Greek market

The present study examines a series of performance measures with the aim of solving the ex-post verification problem. These measures are employed to test the performance persistence hypothesis of domestic equity funds in Greece, during the period 1998–2004. Correctly adjusting for risk factors and documented portfolio strategies explains a significant part of the reported persistence. The intercept of the augmented Carhart regression is proposed as the most appropriate performance measure. Using this measure, weak evidence for persistence, only before 2001, is documented. The growth of the fund industry, the direction of flows to past winners and the integration in the international financial system are suggested to be the reasons for the absence of performance persistence.     

Out of Bounds: Do SPF Respondents Have Anchored Inflation Expectations?

Since the Federal Open Market Committee announced a 2% inflation target in 2012, the median long-run inflation forecast of professional forecasters has been near target. We show, however, that most individual forecasters' long-run inflation expectations fluctuate substantially, with sizeable departures from target. We propose a new “bounds anchoring” indicator based on deviations of individuals' long-run forecasts from target. This indicator sheds new light on gradual changes in expectations since the 2012 announcement. We find that bounds anchoring gradually strengthened in the years following the target announcement, but that this trend has recently started to reverse.     

Survey Measures of Expected Inflation and the Inflation Process

The accuracy of inflation forecasts obtained from household and professional surveys has deteriorated noticeably of late, to the extent that a simple autoregressive specification outperforms survey forecasts. The decline in (absolute and relative) accuracy has taken place at about the same time as an apparent change in the inflation process. Projections of household forecasts on realized inflation suggests that households have not recognized this change. For the professionals, projections of expected inflation on headline inflation have changed, but on core inflation have not. By contrast, projections of realized headline inflation on core have changed sharply.     

International Evidence on Risk Taking by Banks Around the Global Financial Crisis

This study models the risks of commercial banks from the United States and developed, emerging, and frontier countries while controlling for bank- and country-specific variables within a panel framework. Bank risk is measured by both the traditional Z-score and a composite bank risk index proposed by the authors. The findings suggest that even though the riskiness of all banks from different country groups increased following the financial crisis, the magnitude of the change is not the same across groups. During the post-crisis period, banks in developed, emerging, and frontier countries experienced a smaller increase in their risk compared to their counterparts in the United States. This article provides support for the claim that banks in emerging and frontier countries have experienced the effects of the financial crisis to a lesser extent compared to those in the United States.     

Dealing with Time Inconsistency: Inflation Targeting versus Exchange Rate Targeting

Adopting a single instead of multiple targets can be an effective way to overcome the classic time‐inconsistency problem. The choice of a single mandate depends on the trade openness and the credibility. Reduced‐form empirical results show as central banks become less credible, they are more likely to adopt a pegged exchange rate, and the tendency to peg depends on trade openness. In a model with “loose commitment,” as credibility falls, either an inflation target or a pegged exchange rate is more likely to be adopted. A relatively closed (highly open) economy would adopt an inflation target (exchange rate peg).     

Endogenous Price Stickiness,Trend Inflation,and Macroeconomic Stability

Previous studies show that higher trend inflation is more likely to induce indeterminacy of equilibrium in sticky‐price models based on micro evidence that each period a fraction of prices is kept unchanged. This paper demonstrates that when the degree of price stickiness is endogenously determined in a Calvo model, indeterminacy caused by higher trend inflation is less likely. A key factor for determinacy is the long‐run inflation elasticity of output implied by the New Keynesian Phillips curve. This elasticity declines substantially with higher trend inflation in the case of exogenously given price stickiness, whereas in the case of endogenous price stickiness the decline in the elasticity is mitigated because higher trend inflation leads to a higher probability of price adjustment.