INFLATION COSTS, UNCERTAINTY COSTS AND EMERGING MARKETS

William Miles () and Samuel Schreyer ()
Additional contact information
William Miles: Department of Economics, Wichita State University
Samuel Schreyer: Department of Economics, St. Cloud State University

Journal of Economic Development, 2009, vol. 34, issue 2, 169-183

Abstract: Given the costs to real output that inflation uncertainty has been shown to impose, two recent papers have investigated the interaction of inflation and uncertainty for a group of emerging market nations. Both papers find that an increase in inflation almost invariably increases uncertainty in developing countries. This finding accords with the Friedman hypothesis and with most results for industrialized countries. However, there is both theoretical and some tentative empirical evidence suggesting that, when inflation is high, and thus costly, an increase in inflation can spur greater investment in predicting the path of prices, and actually reduce rather than increase uncertainty. This possibility is particularly relevant for emerging markets, some of which have histories of high inflation. Using a somewhat different empirical methodology than previous authors, we find that inflation does indeed lower uncertainty at some horizons, and, as per theory, does so predominantly in those countries in our sample with the higher rates of inflation.

Keywords: Price Level; Inflation; Deflation; Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.jed.or.kr/full-text/34-2/9.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:jed:journl:v:34:y:2009:i:2:p:169-183

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Development is currently edited by Sung Y. Park

More articles in Journal of Economic Development from Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sung Y. Park ().