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Understanding Inflation in India

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  • Laurence Ball
  • Anusha Chari
  • Prachi Mishra

Abstract

This paper examines the behavior of quarterly inflation in India since 1994, both headline inflation and core inflation as measured by the weighted median of price changes across industries. We explain core inflation with a Phillips curve in which the inflation rate depends on a slow-moving average of past inflation and on the deviation of output from trend. Headline inflation is more volatile than core: it fluctuates due to large changes in the relative prices of certain industries, which are largely but not exclusively industries that produce food and energy. There is some evidence that changes in headline inflation feed into expected inflation and future core inflation. Several aspects of India’s inflation process are similar to inflation in advanced economies in the 1970s and 80s.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Ball & Anusha Chari & Prachi Mishra, 2016. "Understanding Inflation in India," NBER Working Papers 22948, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22948
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Laurence Ball & Sandeep Mazumder, 2019. "A Phillips Curve with Anchored Expectations and Short‐Term Unemployment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(1), pages 111-137, February.
    2. Laurence Ball & Sandeep Mazumder, 2011. "Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(1 (Spring), pages 337-405.
    3. Mishra, Prachi & Roy, Devesh, 2012. "Explaining Inflation in India: The Role of Food Prices," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 8(1), pages 139-224.
    4. Samarjit Das, 2003. "Modelling money, price and output in India: a vector autoregressive and moving average (VARMA) approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(10), pages 1219-1225.
    5. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    6. Laurence Ball & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1995. "Relative-Price Changes as Aggregate Supply Shocks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 161-193.
    7. Subir Gokarn, 1997. "Economic reforms and relative price movements in India: a 'supply shock' approach," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 299-324.
    8. Mazumder, Sandeep, 2011. "The stability of the Phillips curve in India: Does the Lucas critique apply?," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 528-539.
    9. Naveen Srinivasan & Vidya Mahambare & M. Ramachandran, 2006. "Modelling Inflation in India: A Critique of the Structuralist Approach," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 4(2), pages 45-58, July.
    10. Pami Dua & Upasna Gaur, 2010. "Determination of inflation in an open economy Phillips curve framework: the case of developed and developing Asian countries," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 33-51.
    11. Subir Gokarn, 2011. "The price of protein," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 327-335, July.
    12. Michael Debabrata Patra & Muneesh Kapur, 2012. "A monetary policy model for India," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 18-41, March.
    13. Kapur, Muneesh, 2013. "Revisiting the Phillips curve for India and inflation forecasting," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 17-27.
    14. D. M. Nachane & R. Lakshmi, 2002. "Dynamics of inflation in India - a P-Star approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 101-110.
    15. Virmani, Vineet, 2004. "Estimating Output Gap for the Indian Economy: Comparing Results from Unobserved-Components Models and the Hodrick-Prescott Filter," IIMA Working Papers WP2004-04-02, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ashima Goyal & Sritama Ray, 2022. "Exploring correlations between aggregate demand and supply shocks in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2022-004, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    2. Pulapre Balakrishnan & M Parameswaran, 2019. "Modeling the Dynamics of Inflation in India," Working Papers 16, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    3. Santosh Kumar Dash, 2017. "Is Money Supply Exogenous? Evidence from India," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 11(2), pages 167-195, May.
    4. Pulapre Balakrishnan & M. Parameswaran, 2021. "Modelling Inflation in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 19(3), pages 555-581, September.
    5. Das, Abhiman & Lahiri, Kajal & Zhao, Yongchen, 2019. "Inflation expectations in India: Learning from household tendency surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 980-993.
    6. Ashima Goyal & Abhishek Kumar, 2022. "What drives Indian inflation? Demand or supply," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2022-013, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    7. Bhavesh Salunkhe & Anuradha Patnaik, 2019. "Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy in India: A New Keynesian Phillips Curve Perspective," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 8(2), pages 144-179, December.
    8. Taniya Ghosh & Sohini Sahu & Siddhartha Chattopadhyay, 2021. "Inflation expectations of households in India: Role of oil prices, economic policy uncertainty, and spillover of global financial uncertainty," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(2), pages 230-251, April.
    9. Pulapre Balakrishnan & M. Parameswaran, 2022. "What lowered inflation in India: monetary policy or commodity prices?," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 97-111, June.
    10. Pulapre Balakrishnan & M. Parameswaran, 2019. "Modeling the Dynamics of Inflation in India," Working Papers 1023, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F0 - International Economics - - General

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