Inflation Targeting and Inflation Persistence

This paper argues that the adoption of an inflation target reduces the persistence of inflation.We develop the theoretical literature on inflation persistence by introducing a Taylor Rule for monetary policy into a model of persistence and showing that inflation targets reduce inflation persistence.We investigate changes in the time series properties of inflation in seven countries that introduced inflation targets in the late 1980s or early 1990s.We find that the persistence of inflation is greatly reduced or eliminated following the introduction of inflation targets.     

Inflation Targeting and Inflation Uncertainty

This article empirically investigates the impact of inflation targeting on inflation uncertainty. We implement PARCH and GARCH methodologies to model conditional variance of inflation. We also investigate the relationship between level and volatility of inflation to analyze the validity of the Friedman hypothesis for IT countries. We find that most of the inflation targeting countries have significantly lower inflation variances after inflation targeting. In most of the IT countries, the relationship is consistent with the Friedman hypothesis.     

Inflation, Inflation Variability, and Corruption

We present a model where agents can inflate the cost of goods needed to start an investment project and inflation variability increases monitoring costs. We show that inflation variability can lead to higher corruption and lower investment. We document a positive relationship between corruption and inflation variability in a sample of 75 countries. The effect is robust to the inclusion of country fixed effects, other controls, and 2SLS estimation. The results are economically significant: a one standard deviation increase in inflation variance from the median increases corruption by 12 percent of a standard deviation and reduces growth by 0.33 percentage points. Our paper highlights a new channel through which inflation reduces investment and growth, thus bridging the perception gap over the costs of inflation between economists and the public. We also find evidence that political competition reduces corruption and that corruption is pro-cyclical.     

通货膨胀预期与通货膨胀加速的关系及治理对策

将预期引入通货膨胀理论研究,是现代通货膨胀理论的一个重大贡献。通货膨胀预期作为一种主观心理要素已成为客观通货膨胀的"助推剂"与"加速器"。稳定并消除通货膨胀预期,遏止通货膨胀加速,不仅要从生产、流通、分配、消费四个领域加大力度,还要使通货膨胀预期收益不断降低。不断提高劳动者的工资收入,使之指数化、法制化则是遏止通货膨胀的根本之策。     

Inflation and unemployment in the share economy

This note first interprets Weitzman's monopolistic competition analogy to the share economy and considers the implications of this for the nature of “excess demand” in such an economy. The discussion then focuses on the effects of the real wage flexibility induced by sharing schemes. It is observed that Weitzman's analysis is entirely in terms of real, not nominal, variables. The note concludes with remarks on possible distributional conflicts in a share economy.     

中国通货膨胀率及其波动关系分析

有关通货膨胀率和通货膨胀率波动影响关系,存在F riedm an-B a ll和Cuk ierm an-M e ltzer两种假说,即存在通货膨胀率及其波动的相互影响关系。使用GARCH和TGARCH模型,选择中国1993~2004年月度通货膨胀率数据,检验结果表明F riedm an-B a ll假说成立,稳健的货币政策对经济发展有积极作用。     

Inflation and the fiscal limit

We use a rational expectations framework to assess the implications of rising debt in an environment with a “fiscal limit”. The fiscal limit is defined as the point where the government no longer has the ability to finance higher debt levels by increasing taxes, so either an adjustment to fiscal spending or monetary policy must occur to stabilize debt. We give households a joint probability distribution over the various policy adjustments that may occur, as well as over the timing of when the fiscal limit is hit. One policy option that stabilizes debt is a passive monetary policy, which generates a burst of inflation that devalues the existing nominal debt stock. The probability of this outcome places upward pressure on inflation expectations and poses a substantial challenge to a central bank pursuing an inflation target. The distribution of outcomes for the path of future inflation has a fat right tail, revealing that only a small set of outcomes imply dire inflationary scenarios. Avoiding these scenarios, however, requires the fiscal authority to renege on some share of future promised transfers.     

Inflation and stabilization in Argentina

This paper reports the results of simulation experiments which were conducted by using a CGE model of Argentina. The results suggest that: the economy could not have been stabilized by using the preannounced devaluation rate during 1978-81; economic performance could have improved in 1985-89 under a modified Austral plan but, with the altered structure, there would still be a severe currency appreciation; and the Convertibility Law based programme is very successful in arresting inflation and eliminating a budget deficit, though it is not free from side effects such as money supply shortages and high interest rates.     

Inflation and Investment

This paper argues that inflation curbs investment because depreciations for tax purposes are at historical costs and because it renders firms liquidity constrained by lowering accounting profits of levered firms. Using panel data for the OECD countries, the empirical estimates show that investment in non‐residential buildings and structures and in machinery and equipment is strongly negatively related to inflation, which suggests that the low inflation environment in the 1990s has been an important contributor to the high investment activity over the past decade in the OECD countries.     

Inflation and inflation uncertainty in the euro area

This article estimates a time-varying AR-GARCH model of inflation producing measures of inflation uncertainty for the euro area, and investigates their linkages in a VAR framework, also allowing for the possible impact of the policy regime change associated with the start of EMU in 1999. The main findings are as follows. Steady-state inflation and inflation uncertainty have declined steadily since the inception of EMU, whilst short-run uncertainty has stabilised. A sequential dummy procedure provides further evidence of a structural break coinciding with the introduction of the euro and resulting in lower long-run uncertainty. It also appears that the direction of causality has been reversed, and that in the euro period the Friedman-Ball link is empirically supported, consistently with the idea that the ECB can achieve lower inflation uncertainty by lowering the inflation rate.     

Inflation, Unemployment and the NAIRU in Australia

In this paper we investigate the relationship between inflation and unemployment in Australia, post 1959. Our approach is based on identification of the time series components of the data. Evidence is found of significant correlations between the non-trend frequencies of inflation and unemployment and these correlations are exploited to estimate a simple forecasting model that does not suffer from the instability normally associated with the Phillips Curve. Estimates of the NAIRU are also provided and these range from as low as 2.3 per cent to as high as 9.2 per cent over this period, but these estimates are quite imprecise. Reasons for this imprecision are discussed.     

Inflation and the comprehensive tax base

Adjusting the basis of assets for inflation is discussed and compared with partial inclusion of gains. The importance of deferral is discussed and compared with the importance of adjustment for inflation.     

Taylor rules and the Great Inflation

Can US monetary policy in the 1970s be described by a stabilizing Taylor rule when policy is evaluated with real-time inflation and output gap data? Using economic research on the full employment level of unemployment and the natural rate of unemployment published between 1970 and 1977 to construct real-time output gap measures for periods of peak unemployment, we find that the Federal Reserve did not follow a Taylor rule if appropriate measures are used. We estimate Taylor rules and find no evidence that monetary policy stabilized inflation, even allowing for changes in the inflation target. While monetary policy was stabilizing with respect to inflation forecasts, the forecasts systematically under-predicted inflation following the 1970s recessions and this does not constitute evidence of stabilizing policy. We also find that the Federal Reserve responded too strongly to negative output gaps.     

Commodity Prices and the New Inflation

The intention of the article is to explore trends in economics and sociology, as well as other science disciplines, like history, psychology and anthropology, and investigate the interdisciplinary exchanges that have taken place, leading to convergences and divergences between academic subjects. The “imperialism of economics” is increasingly approaching traditional academic fields of history, psychology, and sociology. However, the article concludes that sociology’s public reputation may have declined, while simultaneously economics is shifting its attention to the social dimension of economic behavior and moving toward the other social sciences; a process which has been coined “social-scienciation.” The argument is that those developments can also be seen as chances to upgrade the social sciences “around” economics. The described process also aligns with recent talk about a need for interdisciplinary studies when this article adopts a different take on the issues of interdisciplinarity and embeddedness.     

Inflation and the Impact of Budgets

This article focuses on the adjustment of budget figures for the effect of inflation on the value of government debt. It asks whether such adjustment improves their performance as a measure of 'fiscal impact'. If inflation significantly influences the impact of budgets on the real economy, policy-makers may make inappropriate fiscal policy decisions if they are guided by unadjusted budget figures. The article argues that if agents perceive holdings of government debt as part of their wealth, changes in the real value of debt will have an effect on consumption behaviour. Therefore to assess the impact of fiscal policy on consumption it may be necessary to adjust budget figures so that they accurately indicate changes in the real value of debt held by the private sector. This article adjusts a series of structural public sector borrowing requirements (PSBR) for the effect of inflation on the real value of government debt held by the private sector. An empirical analysis concludes that the inflation-adjusted budget series provides a superior measure of fiscal impact on consumption, and hence the real economy.     

Inflation and the demand for money in Israel

This paper examines the impacts of rational-price expectations and foreign-exchange reform, in addition to adaptive-price expectations, on money-demand in Israel. The regression results are used to determine the upper limit on the amount of seigniorage.