Inflation and the Skewness of the Distribution of Relative Price Changes: Empirical Evidence for Germany

Jörg Döpke and Christian Pierdzioch

No 1059, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: The present paper uses German annual data covering the period 1969-2000 to present evidence on the link between aggregate inflation and the higher-order moments of the distribution of relative price changes. Our empirical findings confirm predictions of contributions to the theoretical literature suggesting that skewness of this distribution is an important explanatory variable for the inflation rate. Further, the skewness measure also helps to explain shifts in the Phillips curve. Moreover, a structural vector autoregression reveals that the skewness measure helps to explain the variations of real output and might, therefore, serve as a measure of supply side shocks hitting the economy.

Keywords: inflation; relative prices; distribution of relative prices changes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/17904/1/kap1059.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:zbw:ifwkwp:1059

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().