• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.139-145
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• 2019

This study examines the dynamic linkages between food price inflation and its volatility in the context of Sri Lanka. The empirical evidence derived from the monthly data for the period from 2003M1 to 2017M12 for Sri Lanka. The relationship between inflation rate and inflation volatility has attracted more attention by theoretical and empirical macroeconomists. Empirical studies on the relationship between food inflation and food inflation variability is scarce in the literature. Food price inflation is defined as log difference of food price series. The volatility of a food price inflation is measured by conditional variance generated by the FIGARCH model. Preliminary analysis showed that food inflation is stationary series. Granger causality test reveals that food inflation seems to exert positive impact on inflation variability. We find no evidence for inflation uncertainty affecting food inflation rates. Hence, the findings of the study supports the Friedman-Ball hypothesis in both cases of consumer food price inflation and wholesale food price inflation. This implies that past information on food inflation can help improve the one-step-ahead prediction of food inflation variability but not vice versa. Our results have some important policy implications for the design of monetary policy, food policy thereby promoting macroeconomic stability.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.57-84
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• 2020

This study analyzes global inflation synchronization and derives policy implications for the Korean economy. Unlike previous studies that assume a single global inflation factor, this study investigates if inflation in Korea can be explained further by other global inflation factors. Our principal component analysis provides three principal components for global inflation that are linked to the Korea inflation rate - the first component is closely related to OECD inflation, and the second and third components reflect China's inflation. This study empirically demonstrates via in-sample fitting and out-of-sample forecasting that the three principal components of global inflation play a significant role in explaining and predicting Korean inflation in the short-term, while their role is limited in the mid-term. Domestic macroeconomic variables are found to be more important for the mid-term movements of the Korean inflation rate. The empirical results here suggest that the Bank of Korea should focus more on domestic economic conditions than on global inflation when implementing monetary policy because global factors are likely to be already reflected in domestic macro-variables in the mid-term.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.81-101
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• 2021

This paper estimates the expectation-augmented Phillips curve, which explains inflation dynamics, in Korea. The phenomenon of low inflation in Korea has been going on for quite some time, in particular since 2012. During the Covid-19 crisis, due to low inflation expectations the operation of monetary policy was limited as the base rate approached the zero lower bound. The main objective of this paper is to estimate where and how tightly inflation expectations are anchored. It was found that long-term inflation expectations fell to around 1%, falling short of the inflation target, and that inflation expectations are strongly anchored to long-term expectations, which implies that the low inflation phenomenon is likely to extend into the future. The results also imply that even if inflation fluctuates due to temporary disturbances, it may converge to a level below the inflation target. The slight rebound of long-term expectations during the Covid-19 crisis suggests that the aggressive monetary policy may have contributed to improving economic agents' beliefs about the commitment of monetary authorities to inflation stability. This may also help long-term expectations gradually to approach the inflation target.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.413-429
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• 2023

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of consumers' inflation expectations using consumers' inflation perceptions and the sub-components of consumer price index (CPI) basket in South Korea based on a consumer survey conducted by the Bank of Korea (BOK). Design/methodology/approach - Using Carroll's (2003) epidemiological model, we analyzed data from January 2013 to January 2023, resulting in a data set of 121 observations for both inflation perceptions and inflation expectations. This study focuses only on aggregate inflation expectations and perceptions because of data availability from the BOK. Findings - Professionals' forecasts play a major role in forming consumers' inflation expectations, whereas the actual headline CPI and consumers' inflation perceptions do not. These results remain robust when including the sub-components of the CPI basket in the analysis. Research implications or Originality - It would be the most efficient way to suppress professionals' expected inflation in fighting against a substantial spike in consumers' inflation expectations. To guide consumers' inflation expectations based on BOK's inflation targeting, the bank needs to consider professionals' forecasts in devising monetary policies.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.45-68
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• 2018

We uncover a nexus between actual inflation, inflation perceptions and expectations in Korea through analyzing micro as well as aggregate data from the Consumer Survey. We document two novel findings. First, households' subjective perceptions of inflation exert more impact on expectation formation than actual inflation. Second, inflation perceptions are broadly in line with the trajectory of the inflation trend. This is attributable to the fact that changes in actual inflation have been generated mainly by the consumption items whose price changes are perceived more sensitively as those items are frequently bought or have a larger share in household expenditures. Conducting a cross-country comparison, we find that information rigidity in expectation formation process and the nexus between perceptions and expectations of inflation prove to be stronger in Korea. Additionally, we reconfirm the existing finding that the scope of information utilized for forming inflation expectations is fairly circumscribed.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.531-555
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• 2018

This article aims to review the monetary policy rule under inflation targeting framework focusing on Mongolia. The empirical analysis estimates the policy reaction function to see if the inflation targeting has been linked with a monetary policy rule emphasizing on inflation stabilization since its adoption in 2007. The study contributes to the literature by examining the linkage between Mongolian monetary policy rule and inflation targeting directly and thoroughly for the first time and also by taking into account a recent progress in the inflation targeting framework toward forward-looking mode. The main findings were: the Mongolian current monetary policy rule under inflation targeting is characterized as inflation-responsive rule with forward-looking manner (one quarter ahead); the inflation responsiveness is, however, weak enough to be pro-cyclical to inflation pressure; and the rule is also responsive to exchange rate due to the "fear of floating", which weakens the policy reaction to inflation and output gap.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.91-102
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• 2020

The study investigates the relationship between the inflation rate and economic growth to find out the optimal inflation threshold for economic growth. Therefore, this study applied an ordinary least square model (OLS) and the ordinal regression model, and collected the time-series data from 1996 to 2017 to test the relationship between inflation and economic growth in the short-term and long-term. The sample fits the model and is statistically significant. The study showed that 96.6% of correlation between inflation rate and economic growth are close and 4.5% of optimal inflation threshold is appropriate for economic growth. It finds that the optimal inflation threshold is base to perform economic growth, besides the inflation rate is positively related to economic growth. The results support the monetary policy appropriately. This study identifies issues for Government to consider: have a comprehensive solution among macroeconomic policies, monetary policy, fiscal policy and other policies to control and maintain the inflation and stimulate growth; have appropriate policies to regulate inflation to stimulate economic growth over the long term; set a priority goal for sustainable economic growth; not pursue economic growth by maintaining the inflation rate in the long term, but take appropriate measures to stabilize the inflation at the optimal inflation threshold.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.1-32
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• 2010

The global financial crisis has exerted enormous impacts on the attainment of inflation target in Korea. The annual average CPI inflation was 3.3% during the targeting period of 2007-2009 and the target was $3.0{\pm}0.5%$. Thus Korea has succeeded in keeping annual average CPI inflation just below the upper limit of the 2007-2009 target under the global crisis. This paper intends to evaluate the performance of the inflation targeting system in Korea. First, it estimates the conventional call rate reaction equation under the global crisis and finds that the policy interest rates never reacted to expected inflation, output gap, and won/dollar exchange rate, as expected by theory. Second, it identifies the shock of global financial crisis into core and non-core, applying the structural VAR model. The core shock was defined to have no (medium- to) long-run impact on real output. The core shock was identified to have the character of the demand shock, since it has the positive impact on the inflation and output in the short run. The structural core inflation due to core shock was an attractor of headline inflation, not vice versa. Therefore, the structural core inflation that reflects the demand-side shock would be the better intermediate target for the final headline inflation target than the official core inflation that excludes the volatile inflation of agricultural and oil-related products. During the inflation targeting period of 2007-2009, the structural core inflation was more volatile than the official core inflation, because the global crisis has very large negative impacts on the domestic demand as well as the prices of agricultural and oil-related products. This paper shows that the negative core shock during the fourth quarter of 2008 was larger than that in the financial crisis in 1998. But the core shock turned into positive very quickly in 2009, as the Korean economy recovered very quickly from crisis. The volatile changes in structural core inflation suggests that the Bank of Korea barely managed to attain the 2007-2009 inflation target, owing to the very large negative impacts of the global financial crisis on the domestic demand. It also suggests that the rapid rise in core inflation with the rapid recovery of the Korean economy will lead to rapid rise in headline inflation.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.309-313
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• 2015

If the present universe is slightly open then pre-inflation curvature would appear as a cosmic dark-flow component of the CMB dipole moment. We summarize current cosmological constraints on this cosmic dark flow and analyze the possible constraints on parameters characterizing the pre-inflating universe in an inflation model with a present-day very slightly open ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology. We employ an analytic model to show that for a broad class of inflation-generating effective potentials, the simple requirement that the observed dipole moment represents the pre-inflation curvature as it enters the horizon allows one to set upper and lower limits on the magnitude and wavelength scale of pre-inflation fluctuations in the inflaton field and the curvature parameter of the pre-inflation universe, as a function of the fraction of the total initial energy density in the inflaton field. We estimate that if the current CMB dipole is a universal dark flow (or if it is near the upper limit set by the Planck Collaboration) then the present constraints on ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmological parameters imply rather small curvature ${\Omega}_k{\sim}0.1$ for the pre-inflating universe for a broad range of the fraction of the total energy in the inflaton field at the onset of inflation. Such small pre-inflation curvature might be indicative of open-inflation models in which there are two epochs of inflation.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.75-93
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• 2022

Purchasing Power Parity (hereafter, PPP) means the purchasing power of two currencies is the same when one is converted into the other one. According to previous studies on PPP, as the volatility of the real exchange rate is smaller, PPP may be more likely to hold. Since New Zealand adopted the inflation targeting policy in December 1989, many countries started to adopt it as their monetary policy frame. Previous studies on inflation targeting found that inflation targeting policy has positive effects on not only achieving price stability but also reducing the volatility of nominal/ real exchange rates. Therefore, in this study, I explored whether inflation targeting policy has positive effects on purchasing power parity subject to 19 OECD countries, applying an Exponential Smooth Transition Autoregressive (ESTAR) model during the sample periods, from 1974:Q1 to 2019:Q4. Based on the ESTAR estimate results, I found limited favorable evidence of PPP for only two countries- England and Switzerland- among 9 inflation targeters, compared to non-inflation targeters, and also I found that favorable evidence of PPP only for these two countries among 9 inflation targeters during post-inflation targeting, but not during pre-inflation targeting. These findings imply that the positive effects of inflation targeting on PPP may be questionable unlike Ding and Kim (2012) and Kim (2014)'s study.