Carlos Dabús

Inflationary regimes and relative price variability: evidence from Argentina

Abstract This paper explores the relation between inflation and relative prices for Argentina over the 1960–1993 period. The study is carried out in the framework of four inflationary regimes: moderate, high, very high inflation and hyperinflation. The evidence favors the view of non-neutrality of inflation: relative price variability is increasing in inflation, but decreasing when inflation climbs smoothly and gradually. The inflation rate and its volatility are the main explanatory factors of price variability, while the effects of expected and unexpected inflation are ambiguous. In contrast to previous consensus, we found that fix price variability is always increasing in inflation, and particularly in extreme inflation. In addition, the relation between inflation and relative prices exhibits structural changes across different levels of inflation.

Land-Rich Economies, Education and Economic Development

We analyze the emergence of large-scale education systems in a framework where growth is associated with changes in the con guration of the economy. We model the incentives that the economic elite could have (collectively) to accept taxation destined to nance the education of credit-constrained workers. Contrary to previous work, in our model this incentive does not necessarily arise from a complementarity between physical and human capital in manufacturing. Instead, we emphasize the demand for human-capital-intensive services by highincome groups. Our model seems capable to account for salient features of the development of Latin America in the 19th century, where, in particular, land-rich countries such as Argentina established an extensive public education system and developed a sophisticated service sector before starting signi cant manufacturing activities.

Relative prices and inflation: new evidence from different inflationary contexts

This paper analyses the relationship between inflation and relative price variability, in the direction of the latter, in two countries with very different inflationary experiences: Argentina and Spain. To address this objective, using disaggregated price indexes (the Wholesale Price Index for Argentina and the Consumer Price Index for Spain), we delimitate different inflationary regimes and compute a set of regressions for each country. Our results suggest evidence in favour of the non-neutrality of inflation (mostly in hyperinflation periods) and do not support either the menu costs or the signal extraction approaches. We also detect significant structural changes in the relationship depending on the inflationary regime.

Price dispersion and optimal inflation: The Spanish case

This paper studies the relation between inflation and relative price variability (RPV) in Spain during the 1987–2009 period. We find that this relation presents a U-shape profile, and that the optimal annual inflation rate (defined as the one that minimizes RPV) is around 4%, higher than the 2% inflation target proposed by the European Monetary Union. More importantly, this result does not depend on whether the monetary regime is before or after the euro. Hence, the main policy implication is that disinflation efforts to achieve the 2% inflation target result in welfare losses. The key link between inflation and RPV is unexpected inflation, whose optimal level is around zero. This suggests that monetary policy matters: the welfare costs associated with higher RPV can be minimized with a credible and predictable inflation targeting policy set at the appropriate level.

The Determinants of Relative Price Variability: further evidence from argentina

This paper analyses the relative price variability (here after, RPVI) for Argentina from 1960 to 1993. We have distinguished a first period (1960-1975) with a moderate and stable inflation and a second one (1975-1993) with four inflation regimes: moderate

REEXAMINING THE LINK BETWEEN INSTABILITY AND GROWTH IN LATIN AMERICA: A DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ESTIMATION USING K-MEDIAN CLUSTERS

We estimate a dynamic panel data model to assess the relationship between different levels of instability—proxied by growth volatility and inflation— and growth in Latin America from 1960 to 2011. Outlying observations could be mistakenly treated as thresholds or regime switch. Hence we use k-median clustering to mitigate the outlier problem and properly identify “scenarios” of instability. Our key findings are that while high inflation is harmful, low inflation is in fact positively related to growth. Volatility is also found to be significant and negative, but with no differential effect— between low and high levels—on growth.

Processes of Evolutionary Self-Organization in High Inflation Experiences

We study some features of the processes that have generated high inflation in Latin- American countries. The statistical evidence shows that these inflationary experiences are fractional brownian noises. Several authors showed that self-organized criticality (SOC) processes may constitute the best explanation of the origin of such noises. But this hypothesis requires that the underlying structure remains timeinvariant. We conjecture, instead, that the economic structures evolve in time being, at each stage of their evolution, self-organized structures. We find that such ESO (evolutionary self-organized) processes still generate fractional brownian noises. Thus, they seem to provide a better explanation for the economic phenomenon of high inflation.

Going under to stay on top: How much real exchange rate undervaluation is needed to boost growth in developing countries

This paper explores the real exchange rate (RER)-economic growth relationship for a wide sample of countries over the period 1960-2009. After removing influential observations, the system-GMM estimates suggest a positive link between an undervalued RER and growth in non-industrial countries, particularly in those with upper-middle and high income levels. In turn, RER volatility is found harmful for growth. These results holds when testing for asymmetric effects of RER misalignment: a real undervaluation boosts growth in non-industrial countries, while overvaluation seems to have no effects at any income level. Besides, the magnitude of the misalignment is also relevant: an undervalued RER of about 26% on average has a positive impact on growth.

Strategic Growth with Recursive Preferences: Decreasing Marginal Impatience

This paper studies a two-agent strategic model of capital accumulation with heterogeneity in preferences and income shares. Preferences are represented by recursive utility functions that satisfy decreasing marginal impatience. The stationary equilibria of this dynamic game are analyzed under two alternative information structures: one in which agents precommit to future actions, and another one where they use Markovian strategies. In both cases, we develop sufficient conditions to show the existence of these equilibria and characterize their stability properties. Under certain regularity conditions, a precommitment equilibrium shows monotone convergence of aggregate variables, but Markovian equilibria may exhibit nonmonotonic paths, even in the long-run.

Growth and Poverty Revisited from a Multidimensional Perspective

Abstract The actual impact of economic growth on poverty reduction is of fundamental importance to the development agenda. This paper offers new empirical evidence on growth and poverty measured from a multidimensional perspective using the global Multidimensional Poverty Index. Results from a First Difference Estimator Model suggest that while economic growth reduces multidimensional poverty, this impact is well below a one-to-one relationship and lower than the impact of growth on income poverty. Results from a cross-section model additionally suggest that countries with higher levels of exports, higher share of industry and services and higher control of corruption have lower multidimensional poverty.