Inflation Shocks and Disinflation: Stylised Facts from the Past 50 Years

Balazs Speder and Balázs Vonnák

Financial and Economic Review, 2023, vol. 22, issue 3, 26-47

Abstract: In our study, we examine the circumstances under which major inflation shocks lead to persistently high inflation. For our analysis, we use macroeconomic data from a broad sample of countries for the past fifty years or more. We identify several cases where inflation rises from the single-digit range to above 20 per cent, followed by successful disinflation within two years. Similarly, there are many examples where inflation remains high after an initial shock. The former cases are characterised by more pronounced increases in interest rates during inflation shocks, more disciplined fiscal policy and favourable commodity price developments. Examining the same sample, we also show that the disinflation after a period of persistently high inflation was not typically accompanied by a significant slowdown in the real economy and instead was often followed by higher economic growth. In the disinflationary episodes we identified, the size of the real cost of disinflation is negatively correlated with the central bank independence, suggesting that a disinflationary commitment played a positive role.

Keywords: inflation; stabilisation; monetary policy; central bank independence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E63 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://en-hitelintezetiszemle.mnb.hu/letoltes/fer-22-3-st1-speder-vonnak.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:mnb:finrev:v:22:y:2023:i:3:p:26-47

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Financial and Economic Review from Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Morvay Endre ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).