Monetary policy and heterogeneous inflation expectations in South Africa

Alain Kabundi (), Eric Schaling () and Modeste Some

Economic Modelling, 2015, vol. 45, issue C, 109-117

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between inflation and inflation expectations of analysts, business, and trade unions in South Africa during the inflation targeting (IT) regime. We consider inflation expectations based on the Bureau of Economic Research (BER) quarterly survey observed from 2000Q1 to 2013Q1. We estimate inflation expectations of individual agents as the weighted average of lagged inflation and the inflation target. The results indicate that expectations are heterogeneous across agents. Expectations of price setters (business and unions) are closely related to each other and are higher than the upper bound of the official target band, while expectations of analysts are within the target band. In addition, expectations of price setters are somewhat related to lagged inflation and the opposite is true for analysts. The results reveal that the SARB has successfully anchored expectations of analysts but that price setters have not sufficiently used the focal point implicit in the inflation targeting regime. The implication is that the SARB may be pushed to accommodate private agents' expectations.

Keywords: Monetary policy; Inflation targeting; Heterogeneous inflation expectations; Expectations trap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999314004222
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Monetary Policy and Heterogeneous Inflation Expectations in South Africa (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:45:y:2015:i:c:p:109-117

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2014.11.002

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().