Dynamics of Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty in Pakistan

Abstract

This study analyses the dynamics of inflation and inflation uncertainty in Pakistan, while inflation has been disaggregated into food inflation and non-food inflation from July 1998 to March 2018. The study follows two step procedure, an ARMA-GARCH model is used in the first step with the generated conditional variance used as measure of inflation uncertainty, while Granger causality test is performed in the second step to find the relationship between the variables. Mean equation of inflation, food inflation, and non-food inflation show that past inflation has significant effect on current inflation, while variance equation shows high persistence of inflation. Unidirectional causality exists from inflation to inflation uncertainty as well as from food inflation to food inflation uncertainty and supports the Friedman-Ball hypothesis. Monetary authorities have to adopt price stability as the primary objective, while core inflation has to be taken as a target of monetary policy, instead of headline inflation.