A growing empirical literature addresses the determinants of the sacrifice ratio, an imperfect measure of the tradeoff between inflation and aggregate output. This study endeavors to advance previous studies in three ways. First, the literature does not satisfactorily examine key fiscal and monetary policy practices that arguably affect policymaking credibility. These include the stock (and flow) of government debt, the issuance of inflation-indexed bonds, and the existence of explicit inflation targets. Second, previous studies unfortunately exclude non-OECD countries. Third, the literature is divided with respect to research design, and therefore this study produces sensitivity analyses of previous results. Given these addenda, the results generally suggest that credibility proxies are largely sensitive to research design. However, some data do support the hypothesis that governments with an incentive, rather than perhaps a publicized objective, to lower inflation achieve lower sacrifice ratios.
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Thomas J. Sargent, 1982.
"The Ends of Four Big Inflations,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Inflation: Causes and Effects, pages 41-98
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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John Y. Campbell & Robert J. Shiller, 1996.
"A Scorecard for Indexed Government Debt,"
NBER Chapters,
in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 155-208
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
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