Inflation and real disequilibria

Mark S Astley and Anthony Yates ()

Bank of England working papers from Bank of England

Abstract: This paper outlines some problems with the methods often used to construct measures of real 'disequilibria' or 'gaps' (eg the output gap) and to examine their relationship with inflation. It then offers a structural vector autoregression alternative which is used to construct estimates of output, unemployment and capacity utilisation gaps. Gap estimates are constructed by summing the effects of particular structural shocks, where the shocks are identified using long-run restrictions derived from theory. The approach has four main advantages over other methods. First, it uses economics rather than statistics to construct the gaps. Second, the estimates are not contingent upon particular assumptions about the structure of the economy. Third, it does not impose a rigid causal chain running from gaps to inflation. Fourth, it permits the simultaneous construction of several gap measures and the examination of their relationship with inflation in a single framework, so that the three gap measures are internally consistent and can be used to make inferences about the structure of the economy.

Date: 1999-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/h ... apers/1999/wp103.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/1999/wp103.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/1999/wp103.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:boe:boeewp:103

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bank of England working papers from Bank of England Bank of England, Threadneedle Street, London, EC2R 8AH. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Media Team ().