Global commodity prices and inflation expectations
International Journal of Emerging Markets
ISSN: 1746-8809
Article publication date: 7 June 2021
Issue publication date: 16 May 2023
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, we study the effect of global energy and food inflation on household inflation expectations during the period 1988M01–2020M03 for a set of European economies.
Design/methodology/approach
We use multifractal de-trended cross-correlation analysis to estimate the non-linear and time-varying cross-correlation. We provide additional robustness tests using the Autoregressive-Distributed Lag method.
Findings
We find that household inflation expectations, global energy inflation and global food inflation are all multifractal. We also find that the household inflation expectations, global energy inflation and global food inflation are positively correlated (i.e., they are persistent). However, household inflation expectations respond more when the volatility of the global energy inflation is lower than when the volatility is higher. The correlation between household inflation expectations and global food inflation does not depend on the level of volatility.
Research limitations/implications
First, paying attention to the global commodity inflation might help anchor inflation expectations better. It is so because Central Bank's efficacy in achieving price stability may be weakened if there is a relationship between commodity inflation and inflation expectation. This task would become even more difficult in the average inflation targeting regime than inflation targeting regime if actual inflation is persistently different from the target inflation. Second, our results also emphasize the importance of effective strategy for communicating to households about actual inflation, inflation target and keep them updated about how monetary policy functions.
Originality/value
We contribute to the literature by estimating the cross-correlation between household inflation expectations with the global commodity inflation, conditional to the volatility of the commodity inflation under consideration.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief, Prof Ilan Alon, Senior Editor, Prof Khaled Hussainey, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful suggestions. We have greatly benefited from the discussions with Dr Ankit Kumar, and Dr Abhishek Rohit and would like to thank them.
Data Availability: Research data not shared
Declaration of Competing Interest: None. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Citation
Devaguptapu, A. and Dash, P. (2023), "Global commodity prices and inflation expectations", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 18 No. 5, pp. 1053-1077. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-11-2020-1382
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited