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Business and Economics > Production and Operations Management

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 31 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
  • Agriculture: Aggregate Supply and Demand Analysis; Prices x
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Cover IMF Working Papers
Drivers of Inflation in the Caucasus and Central Asia
Maria Atamanchuk
,
Alejandro Hajdenberg
,
Dalia Kadissi
,
Giulio Lisi
, and
Nasir H Rao
In parallel with global developments, inflation in the Central Asia and Caucasus (CCA) has exhibited large swings in recent years. This paper investigates inflation dynamics in the CCA and its main drivers and derives conclusions that can inform policymaking. The analysis is based on three empirical approaches. Inflation drivers and its dynamics are investigated through the estimation of a Phillips curve augmented with foreign factors and a panel vector autoregression. The paper also assesses the role of monetary policy in steering inflation outcomes by estimating a local projection model. The paper finds that external factors play a major role in determining CCA inflation dynamics, although domestic factors (e.g., demand conditions, expectations) also contribute. Monetary policy is found to have a statistically significant effect on inflation, including by moderating the impact of external drivers. The findings point to the need to continue strengthening policy frameworks to steer expectations and improve the effectiveness of monetary policy, while establishing adequate social safety nets to cushion the impact from global shocks.
Keywords:
Inflation; Caucasus and Central Asia; Phillips curve; panel VAR; local projection method; monetary policy; CCA inflation dynamics; inflation driver; Phillips Curve estimation; inflation development; inflation outcome; Food prices; Output gap; Nominal effective exchange rate; Oil prices; Global; Central Asia and the Caucasus
Cover IMF Working Papers
Industrial Policy in Europe: A Single Market Perspective
Andrew Hodge
,
Roberto Piazza
,
Fuad Hasanov
,
Xun Li
,
Maryam Vaziri
,
Atticus Weller
, and
Yu Ching Wong
European countries are increasingly turning to industrial policy to address the challenge of geopolitical fragmentation, enhance productivity, and accelerate the green transition. Well-targeted industrial policy has the potential to correct market failures and support production efficiency by exploiting scale effects and internalizing knowledge externalities. But even the most carefully designed unilateral industrial policies risk generating negative production externalities in other countries, and, under certain conditions, may not even be welfare-enhancing for the implementing country. The reason is that negative externalities of unilateral industrial policy can drive European and international production patterns away from underlying comparative advantages, create regional or global over-supply, and result in changes in terms of trade that reduce domestic welfare. This suggests significant benefits from coordination. Structural modeling and case studies show that a coordinated approach within the European Union and with international trading partners on a narrowly defined and carefully designed set of industrial policies could unlock untapped benefits. Closer European integration would facilitate the adjustment of firms and workers to coordinated and well-targeted industrial policies and amplify their benefits.
Keywords:
Industrial policy; European Single Market; State Aid; EU aerospace industry export; EU single market; fishery block exemption regulation; State aid expenditure; single market perspective; Comparative advantage; Demand elasticity; Competition; Terms of trade; Europe; Global
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Domestic and External Drivers of Inflation: The Gambia
Jean-Claude Nachega
,
Glen Kwende
,
Laurent Kemoe
, and
Fidel A Márquez Barroeta
This paper investigates the drivers of headline inflation and the degree of exchange rate passthrough (ERPT) in The Gambia over the period 2014-2023. The analysis highlights the decisive long-term roles of global prices of commodities (food, oil and fertilizer), the exchange rate, and the domestic output gap. The short-run dynamics of inflation points to the roles of global food price and the second-round effects of changes in food prices and the output gap. Monetary policy has the potential to tame inflation in the short run provided the monetary policy rate is adjusted rapidly and boldly. Lastly, there is evidence of an asymmetric ERPT to domestic prices, and the size of currency depreciation matters for inflation dynamics.
Keywords:
Inflation; monetary policy rate; oil prices; food prices; fertilizer prices; exchange rates; inflation dynamics; inflation point; drivers of inflation; points to the role; Output gap; Central bank policy rate; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Demand vs. Supply Decomposition of Inflation: Cross-Country Evidence with Applications
Melih Firat
and
Otso Hao
What are the contributions of demand and supply factors to inflation? To address this question, we follow Shapiro (2022) and construct quarterly demand-driven and supply-driven inflation series for 32 countries utilizing sectoral Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) data. We highlight global trends and country-specific differences in inflation decompositions during critical periods such as the great financial crisis of 2008 and the recent inflation surge since 2021. Validating our inflation series, we find that supply-driven inflation is more reactive to oil shocks and supply chain pressures, while demand-driven inflation displays a more pronounced response to monetary policy shocks. Our results also suggest a steeper Phillips curve when inflation is demand-driven, holding significant implications for effective policy design.
Keywords:
Inflation decomposition; demand vs supply; Phillips curve; monetary policy; supply chain pressures; supply decomposition of inflation; demand-driven inflation; supply-driven inflation; decomposition analysis; inflation decomposition methodology; Inflation; Supply shocks; Oil production; Output gap; Oil prices; Global; Asia and Pacific; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Understanding Post-COVID Inflation Dynamics
Martin Harding
,
Jesper Lindé
, and
Mathias Trabandt
We propose a macroeconomic model with a nonlinear Phillips curve that has a flat slope when inflationary pressures are subdued and steepens when inflationary pressures are elevated. The nonlinear Phillips curve in our model arises due to a quasi-kinked demand schedule for goods produced by firms. Our model can jointly account for the modest decline in inflation during the Great Recession and the surge in inflation during the Post-Covid period. Because our model implies a stronger transmission of shocks when inflation is high, it generates conditional heteroskedasticity in inflation and inflation risk. Hence, our model can generate more sizeable inflation surges due to cost-push and demand shocks than a standard linearized model. Finally, our model implies that the central bank faces a more severe trade-off between inflation and output stabilization when inflation is high.
Keywords:
Inflation dynamics; inflation risk; monetary policy; linearized model; nonlinear model; real rigidities; cost-push shock; nonlinear Phillips curve; inflation-output gap trade-off; Inflation; Output gap; Central bank policy rate; Demand elasticity; Interest rate floor; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Macroeconomic Effects of Market Structure Distortions: Evidence from French Cartels
Flavien Moreau
and
Ludovic Panon
We provide systematic evidence on cartels’ characteristics, using novel data on cases investigated by the French Competition Authority. These practices are widely spread across sectors and cartel members are typically among the top firms in their industries. In a model with heterogeneous firms and collusion, cartels amplify misallocation by charging supracompetitive markups. Breaking down French cartels would increase aggregate productivity by 2%, welfare by 3.5%, bringing the economy 37% closer to the efficient frontier. These numbers shed light on the aggregate importance of collusion.
Keywords:
Competition; cartels; collusion; welfare; misallocation; cartel member; market structure distortion; characteristics of cartel; systematic evidence; markup dispersion; Productivity; Demand elasticity; Total factor productivity; Inflation; Europe; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Sectoral Shocks and Spillovers: An Application to COVID-19
Miss Sonali Das
,
Giacomo Magistretti
,
Evgenia Pugacheva
, and
Mr. Philippe Wingender
This paper examines the role of sectoral spillovers in propagating sectoral shocks in the broader economy, both in the past and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we study how shocks that occur within a sector itself and spillovers from shocks to other sectors affect sectoral activity, for a large sample of countries from 1995 to 2014. We find that both supply and demand shocks—measured as changes in, respectively, productivity and government purchases at the sector level—have large spillover effects on sector-level gross value added and on a sector’s share of the economy. We then use these historical estimates, together with the network structure of global production, to quantify the spillovers from the economic shock associated with the pandemic. We find spillover effects to be sizeable, making up a significant fraction of the overall decline in activity in 2020.Our results have implications for the design of policies with a sectoral dimension.
Keywords:
spillover effect; appendix C. Construction; supply and demand demand shock; spillovers from shock; sector recovery; Spillovers; COVID-19; Supply shocks; Total factor productivity; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Measuring Output Gap: Is It Worth Your Time?
Mr. Jiaqian Chen
and
Lucyna Gornicka
We apply a range of models to the U.K. data to obtain estimates of the output gap. A structural VAR with an appropriate identification strategy provides improved estimates of output gap with better real time properties and lower sensitivity to temporary shocks than the usual filtering techniques. It also produces smaller out-of-sample forecast errors for inflation. At the same time, however, our results suggest caution in basing policy decisions on output gap estimates.
Keywords:
WP; output gap estimate; open economy; open economy SVAR; U.K. output gap; output gap series; output gap model; output gap measure; Output gap; Potential output; Structural vector autoregression; Supply shocks; Inflation; Global; output gaps; real time estimation; business cycles
Cover IMF Working Papers
What is the Impact of Increased Business Competition?
Sónia Félix
and
Chiara Maggi
This paper studies the macroeconomic effect and underlying firm-level transmission channels of a reduction in business entry costs. We provide novel evidence on the response of firms' entry, exit, and employment decisions. To do so, we use as a natural experiment a reform in Portugal that reduced entry time and costs. Using the staggered implementation of the policy across the Portuguese municipalities, we find that the reform increased local entry and employment by, respectively, 25% and 4.8% per year in its first four years of implementation. Moreover, around 60% of the increase in employment came from incumbent firms expanding their size, with most of the rise occurring among the most productive firms. Standard models of firm dynamics, which assume a constant elasticity of substitution, are inconsistent with the expansionary and heterogeneous response across incumbent firms. We show that in a model with heterogeneous firms and variable markups the most productive firms face a lower demand elasticity and expand their employment in response to increased entry.
Keywords:
WP; price level; math display; productivity distribution; idiosyncratic productivity; firms drive; municipality Count firm; incumbents firm; pre-existing firm; Employment; Labor demand; Labor supply; Productivity; Demand elasticity; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Credit Supply and Productivity Growth
Francesco Manaresi
and
Mr. Nicola Pierri
We study the impact of bank credit on firm productivity. We exploit a matched firm-bank database covering all the credit relationships of Italian corporations, together with a natural experiment, to measure idiosyncratic supply-side shocks to credit availability and to estimate a production model augmented with financial frictions. We find that a contraction in credit supply causes a reduction of firm TFP growth and also harms IT-adoption, innovation, exporting, and adoption of superior management practices, while a credit expansion has limited impact. Quantitatively, the credit contraction between 2007 and 2009 accounts for about a quarter of observed the decline in TFP.
Keywords:
WP; supply shock; credit supply; interbank market; capital stock; Productivity; Export; Management; IT adoption; productivity dynamics; firm TFP; credit crunch; borrowing firm; policy function; input acquisition; relation characteristic; firm information; firm balance-sheets; output price; productivity effect; Credit; Supply shocks; Bank credit; Interbank markets