Public debt, money supply, and inflation : a cross-country study and its application to Jamaica /

Public debt, money supply, and inflation : a cross-country study and its application to Jamaica /

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Panth, Sanjaya.
Imprint:	[Washington, D.C.] : International Monetary Fund, ©2006.
Description:	1 online resource (37 pages)
Language:	English
Series:	IMF working paper ; WP/06/121 IMF working paper ; WP/06/121.
Subject:	Debts, Public -- Econometric models. Money supply. Inflation (Finance) Inflation, Economic Debts, Public -- Econometric models. Inflation (Finance) Money supply.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12498977

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references. Print version record.
Summary:	This paper provides comprehensive empirical evidence that supports the predictions of Sargent and Wallace''s (1981) "unpleasant monetarist arithmetic" that an increase in public debt is typically inflationary in countries with large public debt. Drawing on an extensive panel dataset, we find that the relationship holds strongly in indebted developing countries, weakly in other developing countries, but generally not in developed economies. These results are robust to the inclusion of other variables, corrections for endogeneity biases, and relaxation of common-slope restrictions and are invariant over sub-sample periods. We estimate a VAR to trace out the transmission channel and find the impulse responses consistent with the predictions of a forward-looking model of inflation. Wealth effects of public debt could also affect inflation, as posited by the fiscal theory of the price level, but we do not find supportive evidence. The results suggest that the risk of a debt-inflation trap is significant in highly indebted countries, and pure money-based stabilization is unlikely to be effective over the medium term. Our findings stress the importance of institutional and structural factors in the link between fiscal policy and inflation

Table of Contents:

Contents
I. INTRODUCTION
II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
III. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY STUDY
IV. APPLICATION TO JAMAICA
V. POLICY IMPLICATIONS
VI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
A. DATA SOURCES AND DEFINITIONS AND COUNTRY GROUPING
B. DEBT-INFLATION TRAP AND DEBT SUSTAINABILITY
REFERENCES