Inflation and Default Dynamics

Parul Jain and Leo Kamp

Business Economics, 2010, vol. 45, issue 3, 174-186

Abstract: Changes in inflation, particularly if they are sharp, can have important consequences for nominal contracts, especially debt instruments such as fixed-rate bonds. This paper examines the intricate dynamics of inflation and defaults. The experience of the United States during the past four decades is subjected to empirical analysis to examine how the nature of the relationship changed as we shifted from a high inflation to a low inflation regime. The paper is organized as a three-part study. We initially examine the U.S. default experience, as summarized in Moody's speculative grade default rate, along with industry differences. The paper then scrutinizes U.S. inflation dynamics as seen in different summary measures of the general price level and delves into pricing power issues. The study proceeds to examine co-movements in the inflation and default series from a theoretical and empirical standpoint and the results confirm the intuitive postulate: higher the inflation rate, the more pricing power companies have; greater pricing power leads to, better earnings and repayment abilities for firms and a lower incidence of defaults.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/be/journal/v45/n3/pdf/be201016a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/be/journal/v45/n3/full/be201016a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:pal:buseco:v:45:y:2010:i:3:p:174-186

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11369

Access Statistics for this article

Business Economics is currently edited by Charles Steindel

More articles in Business Economics from Palgrave Macmillan, National Association for Business Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().