Has the 2008 Financial Crisis and its Aftermath Changed the Impact of Inflation on Inflation Uncertainty in Member States of the European Monetary Union?

Abstract

We study to what extent the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath have changed the impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty in the 12 original member states of the European Monetary Union (EMU). We adopt a time‐varying coefficient regression model with stochastic volatility effects, and extract two measures of inflation uncertainty from our data, namely, (1) The conditional volatility of inflation, (2) The conditional volatility of steady‐state inflation. (1)–(2) represent short‐run and steady‐state inflation uncertainty, respectively. The time‐varying impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty is analyzed using Markov‐switching regressions, where switching between the low and high inflation uncertainty regime is determined via an unobserved Markov process. Results suggest that the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath have changed the impact of inflation on (1) and (2) across the selected EMU member states. However, a uniform pattern cannot be detected. For some member states, we document a strong link, whereas for others, the impact of inflation on inflation uncertainty is relatively weaker.