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.     

Drivers and impact of food inflation in India

Average food inflation in India during 2006–2013 was one of the highest among emerging market economies, and nearly double the inflation witnessed in India during the previous decade. In this paper, we analyse the behaviour and determinants of food inflation over the recent past. Our main findings include that recent surge in food inflation in India is a result of various factors. On the cost side, agricultural wage inflation is found to be a universal driver of food commodities inflation, as well as the aggregate food inflation. The contribution of agricultural wages has increased significantly in the post Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act era. Fuel inflation has a moderate impact on food inflation and the effects vary across commodities. Our analysis indicates limited role of fuel and international prices, except for in tradeables. Finally, results suggest significant pass-through effects from food to non-food and to the headline inflation.     

Globalization and Changing Inflation Dynamics in China

This article investigates the changing impact of economic globalization on inflation in China over the post-reform era. We construct an inflation dynamics model with globalization factors from microeconomic foundations. Empirical results with quarterly data spanning from 1984 to 2012 show that in 1994 there was a significant structural change in the inflation dynamics model, after which China’s inflation responded more significantly to foreign economic slack while the slope of the inflation-domestic slack relation reduced substantively.     

Inflation illusion and the dividend yield: evidence from the UK

We report evidence that the UK dividend yield and expected inflation are positively correlated from 1962 to 1997, but negatively correlated subsequently. Using a commonly used VAR (vector auto-regression)-based procedure we find strong evidence that the positive correlation is caused both by inflation illusion and the effect of inflation on required rates of return. We also find some evidence that it is caused by inflation rationally reducing expected real dividend growth. We find that Chen and Zhao's (2009. “Return Decomposition.” Review of Financial Studies 22 (12): 5213–5249) criticism of the VAR-based procedure has little empirical relevance but that the procedure can be highly sensitive to the choice of data period.     

越南通货膨胀的成因与启示

该文深入剖析了越南通货膨胀的发展和成因,认为此次越南乃至整个世界范围内的通胀失控,既有一国内部的原因,也有全球经济环境的原因。首先全球范围内石油价格和粮食价格的上涨都对越南的通胀失控影响显著;其次越南本国的粮食价格飞涨、流动性过剩和宏观调控失误也是重要原因;最后文章认为应该警惕越南通货膨胀的对外输出作用、全球货币政策需协调配合,同时在此次全球性通货膨胀的背景下,我国应该密切关注通胀效应的国际传递,谨慎对待宏观调控。     

Stock returns and expected inflation: evidence from an asymmetric test specification

Previous studies that examined the relationship between stock returns and inflation have used a symmetric test specification, and have reported evidence of an inverse relation. We use an asymmetric model to re-examine this fundamental relationship between stock returns and inflation. We partition the study period into sub-samples of high and low inflation regimes. An inverse relation between stock returns and inflation forecasts is found during only low inflation periods, while a positive relation is detected through high inflation periods. In combination, results from both high and low inflation regimes suggest that stocks have delivered favorable inflation protection.      

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。     

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.     

News on Inflation and the Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations

This paper examines the nexus between news coverage on inflation and households’ inflation expectations. In doing so, we test the epidemiological foundations of the sticky information model (Carroll 2003, 2006 ). We use both aggregate and household‐level data from the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. We highlight a fundamental disconnection among news on inflation, consumers’ frequency of expectation updating, and the accuracy of their expectations. Our evidence provides at best weak support to the epidemiological framework, as most of the consumers who update their expectations do not revise them toward professional forecasters’ mean forecast.     

Inflation Expectations,Inflation Target Credibility,and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Germany

Using the exact wording of the European Central Bank's definition of price stability, we started a representative online survey of German citizens in January 2019 that is designed to measure long-term inflation expectations and the credibility of the inflation target. Our results indicate that credibility has decreased in our sample period, particularly in the course of the deep recession implied by the Covid-19 pandemic. Interestingly, even though inflation rates in Germany have been clearly below 2% for several years, credibility has declined mainly because Germans increasingly expect that inflation will be much higher than 2% over the medium term. We investigate how inflation expectations and the impact of the pandemic depend on personal characteristics including age, gender, education, and political attitude.     

A New Model of Inflation,Trend Inflation,and Long‐Run Inflation Expectations

This paper develops a bivariate model of inflation and a survey‐based long‐run forecast of inflation that allows for the estimation of the link between trend inflation and the long‐run forecast. Thus, our model allows for the possibilities that long‐run forecasts taken from surveys can be equated with trend inflation, that the two are completely unrelated, or anything in between. Using a variety of inflation measures and survey‐based forecasts for several countries, we find that long‐run forecasts can provide substantial help in refining estimates and fitting and forecasting inflation. It is less helpful to simply equate trend inflation with the long‐run forecasts.     

New Measures for Inflation Uncertainty and Disagreement from Treasury Auctions: Alternative to Surveys

In this article, we propose a novel methodology to construct new uncertainty and disagreement measures for the long-term inflation rate with the use of micro data of Treasury auctions. We employ individual bids submitted in Treasury auctions for nominal and inflation indexed bonds. We argue that these newly formed indicators do not have the problems associated with the survey and market-based uncertainty and disagreement measures. We also focus on the interactions of our proposed measures for inflation rate by comparing the measures commonly used in the literature. The findings of this article are believed to enhance the effectiveness of policy-making by introducing new proxies for crucial economic variables and also by providing the opportunity for other emerging economies with inadequate surveys to construct historical uncertainty and disagreement measures for inflation rates.     

Inflation and monetary regimes

Correlations of inflation with the growth rate of money increase when data are averaged over longer time periods. Correlations of inflation with the growth of money also are higher when high inflation as well as low-inflation countries are included in the analysis. We show that serial correlation in the underlying inflation rate ties these two observations together and explains them. We present evidence that averaging increases the correlation of inflation and money growth in more when the underlying inflation rate has higher serial correlation.     

Monetary Pressures and Inflation Dynamics in Turkey: Evidence from P-Star Model

This paper uses the P-star model to explain inflation dynamics in Turkey. In P-star models, money determines the price gap, which is postulated to measure the pressure on prices in an economy. This pressure emerges when output is above the potential, the interest rate is lower than the natural rate, or there is pure excess money in the economy. The estimation results with the Turkish data show that the price gap contains considerable information for explaining inflation dynamics. Moreover, the model selection criterion that compares the empirical performance of the P-star model with the new classical Phillips curve relation favors the P-star model over the Phillips curve relationship. We conclude that money is efficacious in predicting risk in price stability in Turkey.     

Inflation volatility and economic growth in Bolivia: a regional analysis

This paper analyses the effects of inflation and its volatility on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for the regions of Bolivia over the period 1989–2011. Results show the existence of a positive relationship with inflation but a negative one with respect to volatility. Moreover, we identify a threshold for volatility and inflation. Our conclusions imply that economic agents are more tolerant to relatively high levels of inflation than to high inflation volatility.     

实际股票收益率与通货膨胀率关系的实证研究

股票收益率与通货膨胀率之间的关系至今仍无定论.采用1991年1月到2011年8月的月度数据,运用VAR模型对我国的股票收益率与通货膨胀率之间的关系进行实证分析,结果发现不论是预期的通货膨胀还是非预期的通货膨胀与股票实际收益率都是负相关关系.表明费雪效应在我国不成立,股票并不是对冲通货膨胀风险的理想工具.     

美国通货膨胀指数债券的发明

1780年,为在战争时期稳定士兵的报酬,维持军队的战斗力,美国马萨诸塞州政府创新性地发明了通货膨胀指数债券,但这一债券却未起到应有的作用。本文回顾了这一债券的发明历程,分析了其失败的原因及解决途径。     

Disagreement in Consumer Inflation Expectations

By carefully matching the data sets from the Michigan Survey of Consumers with the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the propensity of U.S. households to learn from experts in forming inflation expectations. Additional results for a group of European economies broadly confirm this observation. We advance an extended version of the sticky-information model to analyze disagreement in consumer inflation expectations. Besides differences in consumers' propensities to learn, disagreement in our model arises from heterogeneity in consumers' fundamental inflation and past expectations and experts' different views about future inflation.     

Saving behaviour under terms-of-trade uncertainty: evidence from hidden cointegration approach

There are very few studies on the asymmetric relationship between private saving (PS) and terms-of-trade uncertainty. This paper examines the extent to which terms-of-trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on PSs in 18 Latin American countries (LACs) over the period 1970–2012. By using the recently developed hidden cointegration analysis within a likelihood-based panel framework and panel-error–correction technique, the results indicate that there exists a long-run relationship between PS and terms-of-trade volatility. It has found some support for the view that the PS ratios have responded asymmetrically to the terms-of-trade variability as an indicator of risk and income uncertainty. The findings of this study confirm that behavioural factors, particularly loss aversion as developed through prospect theory, influence PS patterns.