IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecofin/v26y2013icp497-518.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating inflation targeting based on the distribution of inflation and inflation volatility

Author

Listed:
  • Ginindza, Mzwandile
  • Maasoumi, Esfandiar

Abstract

In this paper the Financial Development Index (FDI) is used to rank 57 of the world's leading financial systems. Its calculation is based on the following 7 economic pillars: (1) Institutional environment, (2) Business environment, (3) Financial stability, (4) Banking financial services, (5) Non-banking financial services, (6) Financial markets, and (7) Financial access. Pillar (4) is constructed from bond markets, stock markets, foreign exchange markets, and derivative markets. Pillar (5) includes a country's IPO activity, namely the IPO market share, IPO proceeds amount, and IPOs share of world IPOs. The stock market index provides a short-term account of financial activities, whereas the FDI provides a long-term broader account of the financial structure and health of an economy. As the performance and success of a given monetary policy would less likely be judged on short-term dynamics, it seems sensible to use the annual FDI as one of several economic and country attributes in a policy evaluation of Inflation Targeting. The paper offers a potential outcomes analysis of the impact of inflation targeting on inflation and inflation volatility, and focuses on advanced economies that adopt “inflation targeting” as a formal monetary policy. In order to deal with the counterfactual question, namely what would be the inflation rate for an adopting country had it not adopted this policy, the paper offers a new matching technique that subsumes the traditional propensity scores methods as a special case. The paper has different proposals for assessing “matching” based on the whole distribution of any “scores”. Additionally, the paper goes beyond the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) and examines the entire distribution of inflation and its “variability”. It is found that the adoption of inflation targeting has helped lower inflation (not just the mean) for the targeting countries. However, it is shown that exact numerical quantification of this policy effect is as highly subjective as choosing ideal social welfare functions. The paper also finds no evidence of a larger gain for “late adopters” of inflation targeting. As for inflation variability, there is some robust evidence of small and often statistically insignificant reduction in variability due to targeting.

Suggested Citation

  • Ginindza, Mzwandile & Maasoumi, Esfandiar, 2013. "Evaluating inflation targeting based on the distribution of inflation and inflation volatility," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 497-518.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:26:y:2013:i:c:p:497-518
    DOI: 10.1016/j.najef.2013.02.018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062940813000338
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.najef.2013.02.018?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. Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Eren, Ozkan, 2006. "The Information Basis of Matching with Propensity Score," Departmental Working Papers 0606, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
    2. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for growth and distribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2138, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Laurence M. Ball & Niamh Sheridan, 2004. "Does Inflation Targeting Matter?," NBER Chapters, in: The Inflation-Targeting Debate, pages 249-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Matías Tapia, 2002. "Monetary Policy Implementation and Results in Twenty Inflation-Targeting Countries," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 166, Central Bank of Chile.
    5. Lin, Shu & Ye, Haichun, 2007. "Does inflation targeting really make a difference? Evaluating the treatment effect of inflation targeting in seven industrial countries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2521-2533, November.
    6. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    7. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Lim, G.C. & Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Martin, Vance L., 2006. "A reexamination of the equity-premium puzzle: A robust non-parametric approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 173-189, August.
    9. Marco Vega & Diego Winkelried, 2005. "Inflation Targeting and Inflation Behavior: A Successful Story?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(3), December.
    10. von Furstenberg, George M. & Fratianni, Michele, 1996. "Indicators of financial development," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 19-29.
    11. C. W. Granger & E. Maasoumi & J. Racine, 2004. "A Dependence Metric for Possibly Nonlinear Processes," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 649-669, September.
    12. Danny Quah, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0324, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    13. Quah, Danny T, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 27-59, March.
    14. Maasoumi, Esfandiar, 1986. "The Measurement and Decomposition of Multi-dimensional Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(4), pages 991-997, 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. Goran Petrevski, 2023. "Macroeconomic Effects of Inflation Targeting: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," Papers 2305.17474, arXiv.org.
    2. Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Racine, Jeffrey S., 2016. "A solution to aggregation and an application to multidimensional ‘well-being’ frontiers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 191(2), pages 374-383.
    3. MBASSI, Christophe Martial & HYOBA, Suzanne Edwige Clarisse & SHAHBAZ, Muhammad, 2023. "Does monetary policy really matter for environmental protection? The case of inflation targeting," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 427-452.
    4. Chia-Lin Chang & Allen, David & McAleer, Michael, 2013. "Recent developments in financial economics and econometrics: An overview," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 217-226.
    5. Suh, Sangwon & Kim, Daehwan, 2021. "Inflation targeting and expectation anchoring: Evidence from developed and emerging market economies," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    6. Petrevski, Goran, 2023. "Macroeconomic Effects of Inflation Targeting: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," EconStor Preprints 271122, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    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. David Sondermann, 2014. "Productivity in the euro area: any evidence of convergence?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 999-1027, November.
    2. Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Racine, Jeff & Stengos, Thanasis, 2007. "Growth and convergence: A profile of distribution dynamics and mobility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 136(2), pages 483-508, February.
    3. Gianfranco DI VAIO & Michele BATTISTI, 2010. "A Spatially-Filtered Mixture of Beta-Convergence Regression for EU Regions, 1980-2002," Regional and Urban Modeling 284100013, EcoMod.
    4. Sebastian Weber, 2009. "European Financial Market Integration: A Closer Look at Government Bonds in Eurozone Countries," Working Paper / FINESS 1.1b, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Fofack, Hippolyte, 2008. "Technology trap and poverty trap in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4582, The World Bank.
    6. Jonas Kibala Kuma, 2020. "Solow model and convergence's equation : mathematical processing [Dérivation des équations de convergence dans le modèle de Solow : démarche mathématique]," Working Papers hal-02424875, HAL.
    7. Maza, Adolfo & Villaverde, José, 2011. "EU regional convergence and policy: Does the concept of region matter?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 889-900.
    8. Henryk Gurgul & Łukasz Lach, 2011. "The impact of regional disparities on economic growth," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 21(2), pages 17-43.
    9. Atanu Ghoshray & Issam Malki, 2021. "The share of the global energy mix: Signs of convergence?," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 34-50, January.
    10. María Hierro & Adolfo Maza, 2015. "From Discrete To Continuous-Time Transition Matrices In Intra-Distribution Dynamics Analysis: An Application To Per Capita Wealth In Europe," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(3), pages 227-235, July.
    11. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Riccardo Crescenzi, 2008. "Mountains in a flat world: why proximity still matters for the location of economic activity," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 1(3), pages 371-388.
    12. Camilla Mastromarco & Léopold Simar, 2021. "Latent heterogeneity to evaluate the effect of human capital on world technology frontier," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 71-89, April.
    13. Davide Fiaschi & Andrea Mario Lavezzi & Angela Parenti, 2020. "Deep and Proximate Determinants of the World Income Distribution," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(3), pages 677-710, September.
    14. Teixidó-Figueras, J. & Duro, J.A., 2014. "Spatial Polarization of the Ecological Footprint Distribution," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 93-106.
    15. Cristina Brasili & Luciano Gutierrez, 2004. "Regional convergence across European Union," Development and Comp Systems 0402002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Miketa, Asami & Mulder, Peter, 2005. "Energy productivity across developed and developing countries in 10 manufacturing sectors: Patterns of growth and convergence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 429-453, May.
    17. Jian-Xin Wu & Ling-Yun He, 2017. "The Distribution Dynamics of Carbon Dioxide Emissions Intensity across Chinese Provinces: A Weighted Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-19, January.
    18. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2008. "Empirics of Growth and Development," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Jaime Ros (ed.), International Handbook of Development Economics, Volumes 1 & 2, volume 0, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Leone Leonida & Leone Leonida & Daniel Montolio, 2003. "Public Capital, Growth and Convergence in Spain. A Counterfactual Density Estimation Approach," Working Papers 2003/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    20. Matthew Higgins & Daniel Levy & Andrew T. Young, 2003. "Growth and Convergence across the US: Evidence from County-Level Data," Working Papers 2003-03, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.

    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:ecofin:v:26:y:2013:i:c:p:497-518. 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/inca/620163 .

    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.