Nonlinearities in Phillips curve: A semi-parametric approach

Abstract

How inflation relates to economic activity is one of the most important concern of macroeconomists. Usually the trade-off between inflation and output is assumed to be linear. But is that correct? If not, what is the correct non-linear relation? To answer those questions, we estimated the inflation-output trade-off semi-parametrically. A nonparametric estimator was used to guide the choice of a parametric non-linear model. The functional form achieved is considered as a New-Keynesian Hybrid Phillips Curve estimated by GMM. This approach was applied to Brazil using data from 2002 to 2012. We have found evidence of cubic relation between inflation and output gap