Revisiting the empirical existence of the Phillips curve for India

This paper revisits the empirical existence of the Phillips curve in the Indian context. To estimate the Phillips curve we need two variables: inflation and the output gap. In the case of India, incorrect measurement of both variables causes much difficulty in estimating the Phillips curve. We use a non-linear Kalman filter approach to estimate the output gap and find that the Kalman filter estimate captures all the dynamics of the economy. Our results show that after taking supply shocks into consideration, there is clear evidence as to the existence of the Phillips curve in India for recent years.     

Inflation in South Africa: An Assessment of Alternative Inflation Models

We consider the relative empirical performance of a range of inflation models for South Africa. Model coverage is of Phillips curve, New Keynesian Phillips curve, monetarist and structural models of inflation. Our core findings are that the single most robust covariate of inflation is unit labour cost. We further decompose unit labour cost into changes in the nominal wage and real labour productivity. The principal association is a strong positive relationship between inflation and nominal wages, while improvements in real labour productivity report only a relatively weak negative association with inflation. Supply‐side shocks also consistently report an association with inflation. As to demand‐side shocks, the output gap does not return a robust statistical association with inflation. Instead, it is growth in the money supply and government expenditure which return robust and theoretically consistent associations with inflationary pressure.     

The Chinese Phillips curve – inflation dynamics in the presence of structural change

This paper models inflation dynamics in China from 1987 to 2014 using a Phillips curve framework. The Phillips curve is generally estimated under the assumption of linearity and parameter constancy. The existence of structural breaks in China’s inflation dynamics make standard linear models inappropriate tools for analysis however. Our results find that the Chinese Phillips curve is characterised by a non-linear relationship. The inflation/output relationship takes the form of a concave curve. This suggests that changes in the level of output effect inflation in China more strongly in periods when output is operating below its potential but the relationship is weaker when output is operating at or above potential. Based on these findings, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) could consider output cost and policy response on a case-by-case basis depending on the level of output in relation to potential.     

Has Greater Competition Restrained U.S. Inflation?

This paper shows how increased goods market competition affects the behavior of inflation in a multisector economy. By raising the price elasticity of demand, increased goods market competition theoretically lowers inflation and makes the aggregate price level less sensitive to aggregate demand shocks. We find that proxies for the aggregate degree of goods market competition are statistically and economically significant in short-run Phillips curve models of core inflation. Evidence indicates that heightened goods market competition has flattened the slope of the short-run, expectations-augmented Phillips curve and slightly lowered the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU).     

Multivariate model-based gap measures and a new Phillips curve for China

This paper examines empirically the Phillips curve relationship for the Chinese economy. We use quarterly data that go back to 1978 and employ a multivariate rather than univariate method in the construction of gap measures for inflation, money and output jointly with reliable error bands. Our empirical results show that the inflation gap and the output gap fit a New Phillips curve very well. We also find some structural change in the inflation–output trade-off.     

Revisiting the Phillips curve for Indonesia: What can we learn from regional data?

This study seeks new empirical evidence of the Phillips curve in Indonesia, an emerging and geographically diversified economy. There are three important contributions from this research. First, applying panel econometric method to exploit regional variation, the study resolves the issue of using on-target national inflation rates that potentially causes weakening inflation-output link. Second, the research examines the relevance of mining industry for output gap measurement at regional level. Third, it highlights the differences in the Phillips curve between the west and east regions owing to their different underlying economic structures. Our estimation using regional data support the validity of the Phillips curve relationship in Indonesia. Backward-looking inflation expectations, exchange rate dynamics and international prices also significantly affect inflation. In addition, the effect of output gap on inflation is larger if the mining sector is excluded from output gap measurement. Finally, we find apparent differences between the west and the eastern regions in the slope of Phillips curve, as well as in the degree of inflation persistence and exchange rate pass-through. The results are robust to alternative specification. Our study adds significantly to the empirical literature on the Phillips curve and have meaningful policy implications.     

THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHILLIPS CURVE: HOW APPLICABLE IS THE GORDON MODEL?

Is there a Phillips curve relationship present in South Africa and if so, what form does it take? Traditionally the method to establish whether or not there is a relationship between the output gap and the change in inflation is merely to regress the latter on the former. This yields the well‐known augmented Phillips curve. However, Gordon has argued that this specification of the Phillips curve produces biased results. Instead, he puts forward and estimates successfully for several industrialised countries his so‐called triangular model that tests for hysteresis and inertia in the behaviour of inflation, as well as the impact on inflation of changes in the output level. This paper considers whether or not Gordon's triangle model is applicable to South Africa, i.e. are hysteresis and inertia present in South Africa? In addition, in an attempt to find a better estimation of the output gap, the paper also experiments with alternative ways to estimate the long‐run output level, including the standard HP‐filter, as well as a production function approach.     

Estimating Asymmetric Output Cost of Lowering Inflation for Australia

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the output cost associated with lowering inflation for Australia. The paper is particularly motivated by a strand of theoretical and empirical evidence in the literature suggesting nonlinearity in the output-inflation relationship, namely, a nonlinear Phillips curve. To accommodate this potentially important departure from linearity, a vector autoregression (VAR) model of output, inflation, and the terms of trade is augmented with logistic smooth transition autoregression specifications. My empirical results indicate that the model captures the nonlinear features present in the data well. Based on this nonlinear approximation, the output costs for reducing inflation are found to vary, depending critically on the state of the economy, the size of intended inflation change, and whether policymakers seek to disinflate or prevent inflation from rising. This implies that inferences based on the conventional linear Phillips curve may provide misleading signals about the cost of lowering inflation and thus the appropriate policy stance.     

Re‐Examining the Role of Structural Change and Nonlinearities in a Phillips Curve Model for South Africa

Although studies generally find evidence of a Phillips curve‐type relationship in South Africa, uncertainty remains about the relevance of the model over a relatively long sample period, and whether conventional output gap measures are suitable proxies for demand pressure. This paper reviews research which shows that the Phillips curve model prevails over an extended sample, provided that the benchmark specifications include major structural changes in the balance‐of‐payments and labour market, and account for shifts in the root causes of inflation. When this is done, a linear specification with an output gap in levels correctly predicts the non‐trended inflation pattern over the period 1971(Q1)–1984(Q4), whereas a piecewise concave curve with an output gap in growth rates accurately forecasts the decelerating inflation pattern during 1986(Q1)–2001(Q2). A novel feature of the concave model is that it remains statistically robust and structurally stable when it is estimated until 2015(Q4). The concave model imparts a disinflationary bias, which suggests that monetary policy should be more expansionary during downswing phases of the business cycle and neutral during upswing phases. The analysis also considers how the shape of the Phillips curve might change if the balance‐of‐payments constraint on demand is relaxed in a significant way.     

Global food prices and monetary policy in an emerging market economy: The case of India

This paper investigates a perception in the political debates as to what extent poor countries are affected by price movements in the global commodity markets. To test this perception, we use the case of India to establish in a standard SVAR model that global food prices influence aggregate prices and food prices in India. To further analyze these empirical results, we specify a small open economy New-Keynesian model including oil and food prices and estimate it using observed data over the period 1996Q2 to 2013Q2 by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. The results suggest that a big part of the variation in inflation in India is due to cost-push shocks and, mainly during the years 2008 and 2010, also to global food price shocks, after having controlled for exogenous rainfall shocks. We conclude that the inflationary supply shocks (cost-push, oil price, domestic food price and global food price shocks) are important contributors to inflation in India. Since the monetary authority responds to these supply shocks with a higher interest rate which tends to slow growth, this raises concerns about how such output losses can be prevented by reducing exposure to commodity price shocks.     

The gain from commitment in a two-country economy with inflation persistence

In recent years, the worldwide inflation rate appears to be converging to a low stable level. Moreover, the Phillips curve is flattening in many countries. These facts indicate that the output gap fluctuations associated with inflation persistence in one country influence other countries and suggest that the central bank consider the effect of inflation persistence on the real economy in an open economy framework. The objective of this paper is to explore optimal monetary policy in a two-country economy with inflation persistence. To consider the case in which inflation persistence is present in both countries, we assume that a fraction of firms that change their prices follows the rule-of-thumb pricing rule. In this case, the new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) in each country becomes flatter as the fraction of firms employing the rule-of-thumb pricing rule increases in both countries. Our results show gains from commitment in a two-country economy with inflation persistence. This paper addresses that the presence of a severe deflationary bias is the main source of the large gain from a commitment policy in a two-country economy with inflation persistence.     

Output-Inflation Trade-Off at Near-Zero Inflation Rates

The purpose of this paper is to provide new evidence about the cost of near-zero inflation using Japanese data. We test the hypothesis that the short-run Phillips curve becomes flatter as the rate of inflation approaches zero. In implementing the test, we pay special attention to how to control for other factors affecting the rate of inflation. First, we use the skewness of the distribution of relative-price changes as a measure of supply shocks. Second, we use information contained in the cross-prefecture Phillips curve to control for changes in the expected rate of inflation. Through a series of empirical analyses, we find evidences consistent with the hypothesis. In particular, we find that the estimated slope in the 1990s is smaller than before. J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 2000, 14(4), pp. 304–326. Research and Statistics Department, Bank of Japan and Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E31, E50     

扩展的总需求总供给模型——一个阐释我国宏观经济运行的分析框架

本文在附加预期的菲利普斯曲线基础上,通过引入可变的技术进步变量,修正了新古典的总供给曲线,指出除预期的通货膨胀率、产出缺口外,技术进步也是影响总供给曲线的重要变量;同时将总需求曲线扩展到开放经济条件下,从而推导出了“通货膨胀率——产出增长率”系统下的总需求总供给模型。作为对扩展后模型的检验,本文利用该模型阐释了我国宏观经济运行中的“高增长与低通胀并存”现象。     

Inflation-Output Trade-Off in South Africa: Is the Phillips Curve Symmetric?

This study sets out to investigate whether the inflation-output trade-off in South Africa is symmetric or asymmetric; and if asymmetric, whether it is convex or concave. A New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model calibrated on South African data reveals that a negative demand shock reduces inflation and output while a positive demand shock of the same magnitude leads to a smaller increase in inflation and a larger increase in output, indicating that the inflation–output relationship in the country is concave asymmetric. These findings corroborate estimation results of the inflation-expectations augmented Phillips curve conducted using difference GMM on quarterly data.     

Economic Globalization and Inflation in China: A Multivariate Approach

This paper evaluates whether globalization has increased the role of global factors in driving inflation in China. Unlike other published studies on the relationship between globalization and inflation, which mostly use Phillips curve models, this paper uses multivariate dynamic models to examine the dynamic interactions between globalization and inflation in China. Empirical results with quarterly data spanning from 1995 to 2012 show that the global output gap significantly affects the dynamics of inflation in China. In particular, the global output gap is superior to the domestic output gap in predicting domestic inflation. Impulse response and variance decomposition analyses reinforce this finding. Our results indicate that the central bank of China should take developments in global output into account in its monetary policy‐making process.     

What to Aim for? The Choice of an Inflation Objective when Openness Matters

Inflation targeting countries generally define the inflation objective in terms of the consumer price index. Studies in the academic literature, however, reach conflicting conclusions concerning which measure of inflation a central bank should target in a small open economy. This paper examines the properties of domestic, CPI, and real-exchange-rate-adjusted (REX) inflation targeting. In one class of open economy New Keynesian models there is an isomorphism between optimal policy in an open versus closed economy. In the type of model we consider, where the real exchange rate appears in the Phillips curve, this isomorphism breaks down; openness matters. REX inflation targeting restores the isomorphism but this may not be desirable. Instead, under domestic and CPI inflation targeting the exchange rate channel can be exploited to enhance the effects of monetary policy. Our results indicate that CPI inflation targeting delivers price stability across the three inflation objectives and will be desirable to a central bank with a high aversion to inflation instability. CPI inflation targeting also does a better job of stabilizing the real exchange rate and interest rate which is an advantage from the standpoint of financial stability. REX inflation targeting does well in achieving output stability and has an advantage if demand shocks are predominant. In general, the choice of the inflation objective affects the trade-offs between policy goals and thus policy choices and outcomes.     

Output gaps and inflation in Mainland China

We estimate output gaps using three methods for Mainland China on annual data spanning 1982–2003. The estimates are similar and appear to co-move with inflation. Standard Phillips curves, however, do not fit the data well. This may reflect the omission of some important variable(s) such as the effect of price deregulation, trade liberalisation and/or changes in the exchange rate regime. We re-estimate the Phillips curves assuming that there is an unobserved variable that follows an AR(2) process. The modified model fits the data much better and accounts for some of the surprising features of the simple Phillips curve estimates.     

Money,inflation, and output growth: Does the aggregate demand-aggregate supply model explain the international evidence?

Money, Inflation, and Output Growth: Does the Aggregate Demand-Aggregate Supply Model Explain the International Evidence? - Using annual post-war data for 32 countries, it is shown that output and the price level are positively related along the aggregate supply and negatively related along the aggregate demand curve. This implies that the negative correlation between inflation and growth simply means that the price level has been countercyclical as aggregate supply shocks domi-nated aggregate demand shocks. It is also shown that money growth has positive and permanent effects on inflation, but may affect output only in the short run: in the long run, money is probably neutral.     

MODELLING INFLATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: A MULTIVARIATE COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS

We employ an expectations augmented Phillips curve framework to investigate the link between inflation, unit labour costs, the output gap, the real exchange rate and inflation expectations. Using multivariate cointegration techniques, we find evidence consistent with mark‐up behaviour of output prices over unit labour costs. Most importantly, we find that the mark‐up in the South African economy is much higher than in the U.S. For South Africa we find a markup of about 30 per cent: three times as high as the 10 per cent markup found for the U.S.     

Variation in the Effects of Aggregate Demand Shocks: Evidence and Implications across Industrial Countries

Over a sample of nineteen industrial countries, more variable aggregate demand and/or higher mean inflation attenuates (augments) the effect of aggregate demand shocks on real output growth (wage and price inflation) while having no effect on the response of the real wage to such shocks. In all countries examined, aggregate demand shocks are positively (negatively) correlated with nominal variables (real output). Among explanations of the business cycle based on shocks to aggregate demand, this evidence favors the new Keynesian sticky wage explanation over the sticky price and the new classical imperfect information explanations.