Inflation Adjustment and Labour Market Structures: Evidence from a Multi‐country Study*

The impact of labour market structures on the response of inflation to macroeconomic shocks is analysed empirically. Results based on a 20‐country panel show that if labour market coordination is high, the effect on inflation of movements in unemployment, import prices, tax rates and productivity is dampened, both on impact and dynamically. In contrast, monopoly power in labour supply, measured by the percentage unionisation of the workforce, appears to amplify the response of inflation to its reduced‐form determinants. These findings are attributed to the behaviour of wages following movements in demand‐ and supply‐side conditions.     

MONEY,OUTPUT AND INFLATION IN AFRICAN ECONOMIES1

This paper examines the long‐run money‐inflation relation for 36 African countries using cross‐section and panel data analysis. The focus is on the recent claim by De Grauwe and Polan that the common finding in multi‐country studies of a strong positive link typically reflects the presence of high‐inflation countries in the sample and on Nelson's criticisms of the data and methodology employed in that study. Adjusting the De Grauwe and Polan methodology to take account of many of Nelson's criticisms, I confirm a weak long‐run relation between money growth and inflation for countries when money growth and inflation are below 10%, but a strong relation when money growth and inflation move much above that number. This result is not dependent on the inclusion of high inflation countries in the cross‐section and panel data samples.     

当前我国通货膨胀的成因分析及政策建议

我国CPI已连续13个月运行在6%以上,这意味着抑制通胀已成为我国政府亟待解决的问题。要有效抑制通胀,关键在于找到引起通胀的原因,再对症下药。本文首先简单介绍引起通胀的一般原因,然后,从我国经济管理制度演变的角度以及国际博弈的角度详细分析引起我国当前货币发行失控,进而引起我国持续通胀的原因。最后,对我国长期以来偏重外贸的经济发展战略和不合时宜的汇率制度提出改革建议,同时,这些建议也是控制我国当前通胀最为有效的措施。     

Issues in New Political Economy: An Overview

A brief overview of the historical background, nature, and rapid growth in volume and scope of new political economy since the early 1980s is provided. the paper continues with some general reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the new political economy approach, illustrated by the other contributions to this special issue of the Journal of Economic Surveys . The final Section summarises these contributions.     

Inflation persistence: Alternative interpretations and policy implications

In this paper, I consider the policy implications of two alternative structural interpretations of observed inflation persistence, which correspond to two alternative specifications of the new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC). The first specification allows for some degree of intrinsic persistence by way of a lagged inflation term in the NKPC. The second is a purely forward-looking model, in which expectations farther into the future matter and coefficients are time-varying. In this specification, most of the observed inflation persistence is attributed to fluctuations in the underlying inflation trend, which are a consequence of monetary policy rather than a structural feature of the economy. With a simple quantitative exercise, I illustrate the consequences of implementing monetary policy, assuming a degree of intrinsic persistence that differs from the true one. The results suggest that the costs of implementing a stabilization policy when the policymaker overestimates the degree of intrinsic persistence are potentially higher than the costs of ignoring actual structural persistence; the result is more clear-cut when the policymaker minimizes a welfare-based loss function.     

西方结构型通货膨胀理论及其对我国的启示

我们正面临西方国家曾经出现并已解决的结构型通货膨胀,我们需要认真研究西方结构型通货膨胀产生的历史背景、成因及其对策,借鉴发达国家治理结构型通货膨胀的对策与措施:实行紧缩性的货币政策、价格管制政策、供给管理政策、根据国际收支和国际市场的具体情况灵活变动汇率等。     

货币需求稳定性、货币目标制与中国货币政策框架改革

稳定的货币需求是货币目标制有效发挥作用的前提条件。文章首先从理论上阐述了货币需求与货币目标制的内在关联。其次,基于协整理论与误差修正模型,利用1996-2011年季度数据实证检验了中国货币需求函数的稳定性。实证研究结果表明,中国长期货币需求函数和短期货币需求函数的系数都缺乏稳定性。货币需求函数的不稳定势必增加中国以货币供应量为中间目标的货币政策操作难度,从而导致现行货币目标制的有效性和适宜性不断降低。最后提出为提高货币政策框架的有效性,中国应择机引入通胀目标制。     

Measuring trend inflation in India

Central to monetary policy is the concept of trend inflation to which actual inflation outcomes are expected to converge after short run fluctuations die out. Accordingly, the inflation target needs to be fixed in alignment with trend inflation to avoid unhinging inflation expectations and flattening the aggregate supply curve or imparting a deflationary bias to the economy. Results from a regime switching model applied to a hybrid New Keynesian Philips curve suggest a steady decline in trend inflation since 2014 to 4.1–4.3 per cent just before COVID-19 struck. This points to maintaining the inflation target at 4 per cent for India.