Nonlinear Relation Between Inflation and Growth - Panel Data Analysis

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Economics - Economic Cycle and Growth, grade: 64%, University of Nottingham, language: English, abstract: This paper examines the inflation-growth interaction for different country groups with similar national incomes for the period 1970-2011. It could be confirmed that this relation is strictly nonlinear with a threshold level of inflation of 3% for high-income countries and 13% for low-income countries. Although this result is in line with previous empirical studies based on a similar data set, much smaller samples needed to be used to obtain these results. Inflation threshold levels are estimated using the iteration method and different panel-specific techniques. Strongly significant thresholds were yielded only when controlling for country-fixed effects. Policymakers can use the findings for high-income or industrialised countries as a guide for inflation targeting, however more precise analyses for less advanced countries are needed in order to be useful for monetary policy.