Re-examining the cyclical behaviour of prices and output

Re-Examining the Cyclical Behaviour of Prices and Output. -Re-cent studies have suggested that prices are not predominantly procyclical and that estimates of negative correlations provide substantially more support for “real” or supply-side interpretations than for “nominal” or demand-side interpretations of business cycles. This paper re-examines the implications of macroeconomic theory for prices and output and provides an alternative interpretation of the empirical results. The main conclusions are: (i) the correlations, when taken at face value, identify the presence of only temporary supply and demand shocks which is inconsistent with the postwar experience of sustained inflation; (ii) demand-induced business cycles can very well deliver timevarying and negative price-output correlations.     

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.     

Financial repression, money growth, and seignorage: The Polish experience

Financial Repression, Money Growth and Seignorage: The Polish Experience. — A small analytical framework is developed to analyze the relation between reserve requirements, base money growth and seignorage revenues. From the analysis, the authors can derive of steady-state seignorage revenues as a function of the rate of money growth and the intensity of financial repression. The framework is applied to the case of Poland that has undertaken a rapid transition to a market economy and implemented a substantial financial sector reform. The process of financial sector reform in Poland is discussed and estimates of the currency demand and deposit demand functions are undertaken to derive the seignorage Laffer curve.     

ON INFLATION

There is currently much more common sense in the South African inflation debate than a few decades ago. In particular, the South African Reserve Bank exhibits a pragmatic, eclectic approach to inflation (as reflected in its bi‐annual Monetary Policy Reports). This is in stark contrast to the narrow, monetarist‐type thinking that tended to dominate during the 1980s. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the debate by highlighting a few issues, including the widespread substitution of the CPI by the CPIX, the fact that inflation is a process, the need to combat inflation, the causes of the decline in inflation in South Africa and the essential features of an inflation‐targeting framework for monetary policy.     

P-Star as a link between money and prices in Germany

P-Star as a Link between Money and Prices in Germany. — The equilibrium price levelP-Star is defined as money per unit of potential output at equilibrium velocity. Deviations betweenP-Star and the actual price level (price gap) serve as an indicator of future price movements. To measure equilibrium velocity and to take into account its downward trend in Germany, a long-run money demand function is integrated into theP-Star approach. According to the empirical results, the constructed measure ofP-Star provides a stable link between M3 and the price level. However, comparable evidence could not be established for Ml and M2.     

Inflation Targeting and Relative Price Variability: What Difference Does Inflation Targeting Make?

This article studies the effects of inflation targeting (IT) on relative price variability (RPV) using a data set of twenty countries comprising both targeters and nontargeters. We find that a decline in mean inflation after IT adoption is not necessarily associated with a similar fall in RPV and that what matters most for the structural changes in RPV is the initial inflation regime prior to the adoption of IT rather than IT adoption itself. IT adoption impacts the shape of the underlying relationship between inflation and RPV in countries with initially high inflation rates, moving it from monotonic to the U‐shaped profile observed consistently for countries with low‐inflation regimes. The minimum point of this U‐shaped curve is indicative of the public's expectations of inflation and is very close to the announced target for inflation in most of the countries we study.     

Did the underlying behaviour of inflation change in the 1980s? A study of 17 countries

Did the Underlying Behaviour of Inflation Change in the 1980s? A Study of 17 Countries. - Have the ERM member countries experienced a regime change to a lower degree of persistence for inflation in the 1980s compared to the 1970s? Some results give the impression that deflationary policies associated with ERM membership may have reduced the mean level of inflation, but did not reduce the persistence parameter over the last decade. However, other results show that the persistence parameter does decline for a majority of ERM members. Surprisingly, the results also show stronger evidence of a fall in inflation persistence for some non-ERM countries who adopted a strong anti-inflationary stance over the same period.     

Learning about fundamentals: The widening of the French ERM bands in 1993

Learning about Fundamentals: The Widening of the French ERM Bands in 1993. — The authors incorporate a Bayesian learning model into a fairly general model of exchange rate determination in discrete time. The model is applied to the period following the widening of the French-German ERM bands in August 1993, in which a systematic underprediction of the franc can be observed until February 1994. A (substantial) part of these forecast errors can be mimicked by a Bayesian learning process. Simulations with our model show that, after the widening of the bands, agents, contrary to their initial expectations, gradually learned that the true process driving monetary conditions in France had not changed notably.     

Inflation and Structural Change in 50 Developing Countries

This study provides evidence on whether the inflation rate is stationary or nonstationary using quarterly inflation rate data from 50 developing countries. As Johansen [Johansen, Soren. “Testing Weak Exogeneity and Order of Cointegration in UK Money Demand Data,” Journal of Policy Modeling, 14, 3, June 1992, pp. 313–334] put it, “some time series such as the log of prices (P), have the property that even the inflation rate ΔP is nonstationary, whereas the second difference Δ²P is stationarity.” Results from fractional integration analyses provide evidence of long memory and confirm that the nonstationarity threshold of d³0.5 is satisfied in the majority of the cases. Results from recursive analyses indicate that, despite the finding that structural changes influence the behavior of the estimated integration parameters, evidence of long memory and nonstationarity can be found in each subsample as well as the full sample data.