IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/chieco/v34y2015icp169-179.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interest rate, money demand and seigniorage: The Chinese hyperinflation 1946–1949

Author

Listed:
  • Zhao, Liuyan
  • Li, Lianfa

Abstract

The lack of an observable variable measuring inflationary expectation has been a major difficulty in empirical work on hyperinflation. In this paper we propose a direct measure of expectations—the black-market interest rate in Shanghai—and study the behavior of money demand in the Chinese hyperinflation. Although the log–log schedule may provide an accurate description of money demand with relatively low interest rate, the pattern of seigniorage collected in the highest hyperinflation is consistent with the prediction of the semi-log schedule. The comparison of the seigniorage actually collected with the maximum steady state level shows that the economy might be on the increasing side of the Laffer curve except for the concluding stage of the hyperinflation. This suggests that the Chinese hyperinflation has been driven mainly by the government's quest for revenue.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhao, Liuyan & Li, Lianfa, 2015. "Interest rate, money demand and seigniorage: The Chinese hyperinflation 1946–1949," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 169-179.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:34:y:2015:i:c:p:169-179
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2015.05.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X15000607
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.chieco.2015.05.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter N. Ireland, 2009. "On the Welfare Cost of Inflation and the Recent Behavior of Money Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1040-1052, June.
    2. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    3. Robert E. Lucas, 2001. "Inflation and Welfare," International Economic Association Series, in: Axel Leijonhufvud (ed.), Monetary Theory as a Basis for Monetary Policy, chapter 4, pages 96-142, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Alvin L. Marty, 1999. "The welfare cost of inflation: a critique of Bailey and Lucas," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 41-46.
    5. Tallman, Ellis W. & Wang, Ping, 1995. "Money demand and the relative price of capital goods in hyperinflations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 375-404, November.
    6. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Asset returns and inflation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 115-146, November.
    7. Bali, Turan G. & Thurston, Thom B., 2006. "Inflation shoe leather costs and average inflation rates across countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(7), pages 1103-1129, November.
    8. Colin D. Campbell & Gordon C. Tullock, 1954. "Hyperinflation in China, 1937-49," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62, pages 236-236.
    9. Frenkel, Jacob A, 1977. "The Forward Exchange Rate, Expectations, and the Demand for Money: The German Hyperinflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 653-670, September.
    10. Hu, Teh-wei, 1971. "Hyperinflation and the Dynamics of the Demand for Money in China, 1945-1949," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(1), pages 186-195, Jan.-Feb..
    11. Bali, Turan G. & Thurston, Thom, 2000. "Empirical estimates of inflation tax Laffer surfaces: a 30-country study," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 529-546, December.
    12. Apostolos Serletis & Kazem Yavari, 2007. "On the welfare cost of inflation in Europe," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 111-113.
    13. Serletis, Apostolos & Xu, Libo, 2021. "The welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    14. Gustavo H. B. Franco, 1986. "Testing monetarist models of hyperinflation," Textos para discussão 140, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    15. Ellis W. Tallman & De-Piao Tang & Ping Wang, 2003. "Nominal and Real Disturbances and Money Demand in Chinese Hyperinflation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(2), pages 234-249, April.
    16. Kent Kimbrough & Ioannis Spyridopoulos, 2012. "The Welfare Cost of Inflation in Greece," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 10(1), pages 41-52.
    17. Pagan, Adrian, 1984. "Econometric Issues in the Analysis of Regressions with Generated Regressors," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 25(1), pages 221-247, February.
    18. Engle, Robert F, 1982. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of the Variance of United Kingdom Inflation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 987-1007, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Augustine Ujunwa & Emmanuel Onah & Angela Ifeanyi Ujunwa & Chinwe R Okoyeuzu & Ebere Ume Kalu, 2022. "Financial innovation and the stability of money demand in Nigeria," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 34(2), pages 215-231, June.
    2. Guo, Yibei & Dong, Baomin, 2020. "Where is the beef? The costs of American aid and wartime China's hyperinflation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    3. Zhao, Liuyan, 2017. "The behavior of money demand in the Chinese hyperinflation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 145-154.
    4. Luca Benati, 2018. "Cagan s Paradox Revisited," Diskussionsschriften dp1826, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhao, Liuyan, 2017. "The behavior of money demand in the Chinese hyperinflation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 145-154.
    2. John Ashworth & David Barlow & Lynne Evans, 2014. "Sectoral Money Demand Behaviour and the Welfare Cost of Inflation in the UK," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82(6), pages 732-750, December.
    3. Irfan Ahmad Shah & Manmohan Lal Agarwal & Srikanta Kundu, 2019. "Welfare Cost of Inflation: Evidence from India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 17(4), pages 781-799, December.
    4. Burton, Diana M. & Love, H. Alan, 1996. "A Review of Alternative Expectations Regimes in Commodity Markets: Specification, Estimation, and Hypothesis Testing Using Structural Models," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 213-231, October.
    5. Yacine AÏT‐SAHALI & Michael W. Brandt, 2001. "Variable Selection for Portfolio Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1297-1351, August.
    6. Serletis, Apostolos & Xu, Libo, 2023. "Consumer preferences, the demand for Divisia money, and the welfare costs of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Kia, Amir, 2003. "Rational speculators and equity volatility as a measure of ex ante risk," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 135-157, July.
    8. Beaulieu, Marie-Claude, 1995. "Rendements boursiers et inflation," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 71(4), pages 455-480, décembre.
    9. Ellis W. Tallman & De-piao Tang & Ping Wang, 2001. "Anticipated Inflation, Real Disturbances and Money Demand: The Case of Chinese Hyperinflation, 1946-49," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0134, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics, revised Dec 2001.
    10. Ellis W. Tallman & De-Piao Tang & Ping Wang, 2003. "Nominal and Real Disturbances and Money Demand in Chinese Hyperinflation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(2), pages 234-249, April.
    11. Noriega Antonio E. & Ramos Francia Manuel & Rodríguez-Pérez Cid Alonso, 2015. "Money Demand Estimations in Mexico and of its Stability 1986-2010, as well as Some Examples of its Uses," Working Papers 2015-13, Banco de México.
    12. Cysne, Rubens Penha, 2011. "The n-dimensional Bailey–Divisia measure as a general-equilibrium measure of the welfare costs of inflation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 99-102.
    13. Ledenyov, Dimitri O. & Ledenyov, Viktor O., 2015. "Wave function method to forecast foreign currencies exchange rates at ultra high frequency electronic trading in foreign currencies exchange markets," MPRA Paper 67470, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Kent Kimbrough & Ioannis Spyridopoulos, 2012. "The Welfare Cost of Inflation in Greece," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 10(1), pages 41-52.
    15. Jo Corkish & David Miles, 1994. "Inflation, inflation risks and asset returns," Bank of England working papers 27, Bank of England.
    16. Paustian, Matthias & Stoltenberg, Christian, 2008. "Optimal interest rate stabilization in a basic sticky-price model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 3166-3191, October.
    17. Li, Yuming, 1998. "Expected stock returns, risk premiums and volatilities of economic factors1," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 69-97, June.
    18. Bekaert, Geert & Engstrom, Eric & Grenadier, Steven R., 2010. "Stock and bond returns with Moody Investors," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 867-894, December.
    19. Javier Garcia Cicco & Patricio Goldstein & Federico Sturzenegger, 2023. "Permanent and Transitory Monetary Shocks around the World," Working Papers 275, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    20. Garcia, Rene & Bonomo, Marco, 2001. "Tests of conditional asset pricing models in the Brazilian stock market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 71-90, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Money demand; Seigniorage; Hyperinflation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:34:y:2015:i:c:p:169-179. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chieco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.