Domestic Price Inflation Research Articles

The role of import prices in flattening the Phillips curve: Evidence from Korea

Are global inflation synchronization and the flattening of the Phillips curve across the globe related? The globalization hypothesis has been proposed to explain the relationship but questions remain on its quantitative role. Focusing on South Korea, one of Asia-Pacific supply chain hubs, this paper investigates the extent to which import prices affect domestic price inflation over the period between 2002 and 2020. Specifically, we conduct the regression decomposition method to identify major sources of variation in domestic inflation, followed by a subsequent set of comparative analyses across various inflation forecasting models. Our findings confirm a tight link from import prices to domestic prices, with a 10pp increase in IPI inflation passed onto PPI and CPI inflation by 3.9pp and 3.4pp over time, respectively. The main finding of this study is consistent with the recent global inflation surge that has been driven largely by imported food and energy price channels.

Monetary policy rule, exchange rate regime, and fiscal policy cyclicality in a developing oil economy

According to Frankel and Catao (2011), a commodity-exporting developing economy is advised to target the product price rather than consumer price, as the former monetary policy is automatically countercyclical against the volatile terms of trade shock. This paper constructs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of joint monetary and fiscal policies for a developing oil economy, to find an appropriate monetary rule combined with a pro/counter/acyclical fiscal stance based on a loss measure. The foreign exchange interventions distinguish between a managed and flexible exchange rate regime, while fiscal policy cyclicality depends on the oil output response of public consumption and public investment. The study reveals that the best policy combination is a countercyclical fiscal stance and consumer price monetary targeting under a managed exchange rate regime to stabilize the domestic price inflation, aggregate output, and real exchange rate in a small open economy.

A new look at asymmetric effect of oil price changes on inflation: Evidence from Malaysia

The existing literature that examined the effect of oil price on domestic price inflation only focused on consumer price at an aggregate level. The studies that focused on producer and production levels, and based on disaggregated data are very lack. Besides, previous studies also mainly applied the linear regression approach in studying the effect of oil price. This study seeks to explore the mentioned issues by focusing on sectoral consumer (CPI), industrial (IPI), and producer (PPI) prices of Malaysia. The Markov-switching (MS) regression technique is applied. The models are innovated by incorporating the asymmetric effects of oil price changes. The results reveal different reactions of sectoral domestic price inflation to oil price changes. The oil price has asymmetric effects on domestic price inflation with higher impacts on industrial and producer prices than the consumer price. The effect is larger in sectors that have higher linkages with oil/ energy resources. These sectors are oil-intensive and are sensitive to oil price changes. Among these sectors are the CPI transportation sector, IPI manufacturing, and electrical sectors as well as PPI fuel, chemicals, and manufacturing sectors. However, oil is not the main factor causes to domestic inflation. The main determinants of inflation are real exchange rate, aggregate supply, and demand. Besides, the policy decisions are also influential on price stability. The sectors of CPI transportation, PPI animals & vegetable oils, and PPI fuel have a high tendency to increase prices and should be well-monitored.

Effect of oil price pass-through on domestic price inflation: Evidence from nonlinear ARDL models

We intended to demonstrate that oil price can have a different passthrough effect into domestic prices at consumer and production levels subject to an oil dependency factor. The results were compared between oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. The nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags (NARDL) models were used to capture the asymmetric pass-through effects of oil price increases and decreases in consumer price and producer price respectively. Our results revealed that oil price changes can have asymmetric effect on consumer price index (CPI) inflation directly and indirectly with more influential impact of indirect effect. This result holds for both groups of countries. The effect on producer price is much larger especially in oil-importing group due to the high dependence of these countries on oil. Oil price changes did lead to increases in consumer prices in oil-importing countries. This may due to effective monetary policy that enhances price stickiness in the economy.

Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Nominal Wage Rigidities, and Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy

This paper discusses the design of monetary policy in a New Keynesian small open economy framework by introducing nominal wage rigidities and incomplete exchange rate pass-through on import prices. Three main findings are summarized. First, with the existence of an incomplete exchange rate pass-through and nominal wage rigidities, the optimal policy is to seek to minimize the output gap, the variance of domestic price and wage inflation, as well as deviations from the law of one price. Second, the CPI inflation targeting Taylor rule is welfare enhancing when there is a technological shock to the economy. The exception occurs when there is a foreign income shock, which minimizes welfare losses under the domestic inflation targeting Taylor rule. Last, two stylized Taylor rules turn out to be a bad approximation, but the modified Taylor rules that respond to the unemployment gap rather than the output gap are a closer approximation to the optimal policy.

Dynamic Effects of Exchange Rates and Foreign Price Inflation: Evidence From Thai

In an attempt to maintain a stable exchange rate and price level in Thailand given shocks from the United States, China, Euro Area, and Japan; the top five trading partners of Thailand, this study employs the system equations of VAR model techniques. Results show that the interest rates, demand shocks, and foreign prices affect the stability of the Thailand exchange rates and price levels. More so, empirical evidences validate the existence of unidirectional causality between Thailand exchange rate and domestic (as well as foreign) price inflation.

The Exchange Rate Pass-Through into Inflation with Symmetric Oil Price Shocks: An Empirical Analysis for Saudi Arabia: 1970-2015

The purpose of this paper is to analyze theoretically and empirically the relationship between inflation as a dependent variable and bilateral exchange rate, output gap and symmetric oil price shocks. The ARDL methodology is employed considering the period of 1970-2015. The exchange rate pass-through to inflation will be thoroughly investigated. Johansen’s testing procedure confirms the existence of long-run relationships between consumer price inflation, exchange rate, symmetric oil price changes and output gap as a proxy for aggregate demand. The estimation results reveal that depreciation of the exchange rate and the symmetric oil price shocks are main factors responsible for long-run domestic consumer price inflation in Saudi Arabia. Although the output gap as a proxy for aggregate demand had the right sign but its contribution is little in explaining the variations in domestic inflation in the long-run. This could be attributed to the sufficient Saudi economic capacity. In economic literature, the findings here are in line and consistent with other researchers’ estimation results.

Impact of oil price changes on domestic price inflation at disaggregated levels: Evidence from linear and nonlinear ARDL modeling

In this study, linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models are applied to examine the symmetric and asymmetric pass-through effect of oil price changes on four domestic price indices in Malaysia. The main objective of this work is to compare how oil price changes affect domestic prices at different levels (production/output, import price, producer price, and CPI) across sectors. Our results show evidence of symmetric and asymmetric pass-through effects of oil price changes on domestic prices across sectors. Oil price changes lead to the positive effect of higher output growth but may directly cause higher import and production prices in the long run through cost channels. On the other hand, oil price changes have a limited direct effect on consumer prices in the long run. The impact of oil prices on consumer prices occurs indirectly through transmission from import prices and production costs. Sectors that are more oil-intensive experience a larger impact of oil price changes. Besides, the monitoring of monetary policy toward creating a low oil environment (for instance, by controlling consumer prices and providing oil subsidy) also matters in controlling the oil price impact on domestic price inflation.

Real Wage Flexibility, Economic Fluctuations, and Exchange Rate Regimes

We study the desirability of real wage flexibility and its impact on welfare for each exchange rate regime, using a small open economy model with unemployment fluctuation. The main findings regarding the stabilizing role of real wage flexibilities can be summarized as two-fold. First, the more flexible real wage leads to smaller fluctuation in the output gap, reduces welfare losses regardless of exchange rate regimes. The increase in real wage flexibilities, however, may have destabilizing effects on domestic price and real wage inflation and may have a negative effect on welfare for both exchange rate regimes. Overall, contrary to conventional wisdom, increase in real wage flexibilities may be welfare-reducing. Second, in the presence of real wage rigidities smoothing the exchange rate fluctuations may increase the welfare loss.

Does wage-inflation targeting complement foreign exchange intervention? An evaluation of a multi-target, two-instrument monetary policy framework

We assess the inclusion of wage inflation as an intermediate target of an emerging central bank using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky wages and prices calibrated for the South Korean economy. The model includes wage inflation as an additional target jointly with domestic price inflation and the output gap in a Taylor- type interest rate rule operating with a sterilized foreign exchange (FX) intervention rule. Our results show a complementary relationship between wage inflation targeting and price inflation targeting. That is, by supplementing price inflation targeting with wage inflation targeting, welfare improves for cases with and without sterilized FX intervention. When intervention is in place, wage inflation targeting has the added advantage of reducing the volatilities of nominal exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves thereby promoting a more sustainable conduct of FX intervention.

Monetary Policy Rule, Exchange Rate Regime, and Fiscal Policy Cyclicality in a Developing Oil Economy

According to Frankel and Catao (2011), a commodity exporting developing economy is advised to target the output price index rather than consumer price index, as the former monetary policy is automatically countercyclical against the volatile terms of trade shock. This paper constructs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of joint monetary and fiscal policies for a developing oil economy, to find an appropriate monetary rule combined with a pro/counter/acyclical fiscal stance based on a loss measure. The foreign exchange interventions distinguish between a managed and flexible exchange rate regime, while fiscal policy cyclicality depends on the oil output response of public consumption and public investment. The study reveals that the best policy combination is a countercyclical fiscal stance and CPI inflation monetary targeting under a flexible exchange rate regime to stabilize equally the domestic price inflation, aggregate output, and real exchange rate in a small open economy. This result is conditional on weights for those three variables used in the loss measure.

Optimal Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate in a Small Open Economy with Unemployment

In this paper, we consider a small open economy under the New Keynesian model with unemployment of Galí (2011a, b) to discuss the design of the monetary policy. Our findings can be summarized in three parts. First, even with the existence of unemployment, the optimal policy is to minimize variance of domestic price inflation, wage inflation, and the output gap when both domestic price and wage are sticky. Second, stabilizing unemployment rate is important in reducing the welfare loss incurred by both technology and labor supply shocks. Therefore, introducing the unemployment rate as an another argument into the Taylor-rule type interest rate rule will be welfare-enhancing. Lastly, controlling CPI inflation is the best option when the policy is not allowed to respond to unemployment rate. Once the unemployment rate is controlled, however, stabilizing power of CPI inflation-based Taylor rule is diminished.

International Transmission of Food Prices and Volatilities: A Panel Analysis

High and volatile food prices pose a significant policy challenge around the world, and an understanding of the dynamics of food price inflation and volatility is essential in designing appropriate policy responses. Using the panel data for 72 countries from 2000 to 2011, the paper assesses the international transmission of food price inflation and volatilities as well as the effects of various internal and external factors on domestic food price inflation and volatility. The paper offers evidence in support of the international transmission of food price inflation and volatility. Specifically, the paper finds that the domestic food price inflation in Asia is strongly associated with the lagged value of global food price inflation (using the FAO food price index), while volatility spillovers from global to domestic food prices are rather contemporaneous. The paper also finds that both national food price inflation rates and volatilities are strongly associated with both intra- and extra- regional food price inflation rates and volatilities, respectively. The findings also suggest that higher economic growth rates, greater shares of food in merchandise imports, and smaller increases in the share of food in merchandise imports lead to lower domestic food price inflation. An appreciation of local currency, greater political stability, and higher income level are also found to lower domestic food price inflation. On the other hand, higher economic growth rates lead to lower volatilities of food prices.

Optimal monetary policy in a small open economy with staggered wage and price contracts

We study optimal monetary policy for a small open economy in a model where both domestic prices and wages are sticky due to staggered contracts. The simultaneous presence of the two forms of nominal rigidities introduces an additional trade-off between domestic inflation and the output gap. We derive a second-order approximation to the average welfare losses that can be expressed in terms of the unconditional variances of the output gap, domestic price inflation, and wage inflation. As a consequence, the optimal policy seeks to minimize a weighted average of these variances. We analyze welfare implications of several alternative simple policy rules, and find that domestic price inflation targeting generates relatively large welfare losses, whereas CPI inflation targeting performs nearly as well as the optimal rule.

Real wage rigidities and optimal monetary policy in a small open economy

The main objective of the study is to provide a theoretical analysis of optimal monetary policy in a small open economy where households set real wage in a staggered fashion. The introduction of real wage rigidities plays a important role to resolve main shortcomings of the standard new Keynesian small open economy model. The main findings regarding the issue of monetary policy design can be summarized as three fold. First, the optimal policy is to seek to minimize variance of domestic price inflation, real wage inflation, and the output gap if both domestic price and real wage are sticky. Second, controlling CPI inflation directly or indirectly induces relatively large volatility in output gap and other inflations. Therefore, both CPI inflation-based Taylor rule and nominal wage-inflation based Taylor rule are suboptimal. Last, a policy that responds to a real wage inflation is most desirable.

New Keynesian aggregate supply in the tropics: food prices, wages and inflation

Since consumer prices are a weighted average of domestic and imported goods prices, domestic Price Inflation (WPII) should cause Consumer Price Inflation (CPII). But at low per capita incomes average wages respond to food prices, raising costs and hence domestic prices. Then CPII, for which food is the dominant component, should Granger cause WPII. This reverse causality is derived and finds support in an estimated new Keynesian Aggregate Supply (AS) framework with the wage-price link. The AS and the identity both hold as long-run cointegrating relationships. The AS is elastic but food prices and the exchange rate are important for inflation.

Impact of International Financial Shocks on Small Open Economies: The Case of Four ASEAN Countries

A more integrated global financial system has implications on the economic volatility of small open economies. This paper simulates the impact of a short term shock originating from the global financial system on small open economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The simulation is conducted by means of empirically estimated small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The analysis highlights similarities and differences of the impact of a pure international financial shock on aggregate domestic price inflation and on output gap for each of the four ASEAN countries. It suggests that the impact of such shock on the sampled economies tends to be relatively small but long lasting, hence placing challenges on the task of managing economic volatility in these economies.

Monetary Policy and Trade Globalization

I develop a two country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous price-setting firms to understand how shocks to monetary policy and aggregate labor productivity impact trade integration, which I capture through the (inverse) average productivity of exporting firms. A contractionary domestic monetary policy shock raises the average productivity of domestic exporting firms but lowers the average productivity of foreign exporting firms. The magnitude of these changes is greater when governments target domestic price inflation as opposed to consumer price inflation. A positive shock to domestic labor productivity generates positive - although quantitatively small - changes in the average productivity of all exporting firms when consumer price inflation is targeted. When domestic price inflation is targeted, the same shock causes a fall in the average productivity of domestic exporting firms, and a far larger rise in the productivity of foreign exporting firms.

Optimal Monetary Policy Under Sudden Stops

Emerging market economies often face sudden stops in capital inflows or reduced access to the international capital market, a development that can cause serious disruptions in economic activity. This paper analyzes what monetary policy can accomplish in such an event. Optimal monetary policy exploits export revenues to minimize the impact on the domestic economy. However, this approach will not completely insulate the economy from some contraction. Domestic currency depreciation combined with high interest rates is needed to achieve this result. The paper shows that the arrival of the sudden stop further aggravates the time inconsistency problem. Optimal policy is fairly well approximated by a flexible targeting rule, which stabilizes a basket composed of domestic price inflation, exchange rate, and output. For some parameterizations, the best rule can be specified as an interest rate rule that responds to the natural interest rate, inflation, output, and exchange rate depreciation. We further show that from a welfare perspective, the desirability of a fixed exchange rate regime depends on the economic environment.

Towards Understanding the Asian Crisis and its Aftermath

During the 1997 economic crisis in Asia, we observed that several East Asian economies encountered significant external and internal shocks that led to a widespread economic recession. The severe exchange rate depreciation may have harmed the supply side of these economies such that production was contracted. Many argue that the initial tightened domestic policies aimed at countering these shocks and restoring economic growth may have further exacerbated the initial crisis by contracting the domestic sector. This paper analyzes the impact of anticipated and unanticipated changes in the real exchange rate, fiscal spending, the money supply, and energy prices on output and price in Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand. The results indicate that anticipated real depreciation during the crisis may have adversely affected the supply side, shrinking output growth while accelerating price inflation. In contrast, the combined effects of supply and demand channels render the outcome of unanticipated currency depreciation inconclusive on output growth and price inflation. Indonesia and Malaysia have experienced a significant reduction in average real output growth beyond the crisis period with a significant increase in domestic price inflation in Indonesia only. In most cases, we credit accommodating policies for countering external shocks.