Inflation, its volatility and the inflation-growth tradeoff in India
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to amend the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) model to include inflation volatility. It provides results on the determinants of inflation volatility and expected inflation volatility for ordinary least squares and autoregressive distributed lags (1,1) models and for change in inflation volatility and change in expected inflation volatility using error correction mechanism (ECM) models. Output gap affects change in expected inflation volatility alone (in the ECM model) and not in the other models. Major determinants of inflation volatility and expected inflation volatility are identified. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper to augment the NKPC to include inflation volatility.
Design/methodology/approach
Recent analysis has indicated the importance of inflation volatility for the monetary transmission mechanism in India (Kapur and Behera, 2012). In the analysis of such monetary policy mechanisms the NKPC has proved to be a useful tool. Thus Patra and Ray (2010) for India and Brissimis and Magginas (2008) for the USA find considerable support for the standard NKPC. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize and integrate these two models by extending the standard NKPC framework to include inflation volatility and test its significance for the case of India.
Findings
In the case of inflation volatility output gap, lagged output gap and lagged inflation volatility are all insignificant. The level of inflation has a negative significant impact whereas the level of expected inflation has a positive and significant impact. In the case of expected inflation volatility lagged output gap has a negative and significant impact, the price level has a positive and significant impact whereas expected price has a negative and weakly significant impact. ECM reveals change in inflation variability falls significantly with lagged inflation volatility and lagged inflation and less significantly with change in expected inflation. It rises with lagged expected inflation although the coefficient is only weakly significant. Lagged output gap and change in output gap are insignificant.
Originality/value
This paper makes two original contributions. First, it extends the New Keynesian framework to include inflation volatility. Second, it estimates this model for India. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper to make these contributions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Thoughts and views sought from Raghav Gaiha and Eric Smith were helpful for this paper. The authors are grateful to a summer scholarship granted to Varsha S. Kulkarni by the Santa Fe Institute, where some of this work was completed.
Citation
Jha, R. and Kulkarni, V.S. (2015), "Inflation, its volatility and the inflation-growth tradeoff in India", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 350-361. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJoEM-09-2013-0145
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited