Is there a ‘Monetary Myth’ in Brazil? An analysis of the cyclical pattern of national prices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-416145354mmvKeywords:
Business cycles, Prices, Brazilian economyAbstract
The behavior of price indexes over cyclical frequencies represents an important judgment criterion for alternative macroeconomic theories. Analysing post-war data, Kydland and Prescott (1990) uncovered a result where prices display a countercyclical pattern, which they termed ‘monetary myth’, as opposed to prevailing business-cycle theories of the time. The main goal of this paper is to study the cyclical pattern of different price indexes in Brazil during the 1980:01/2013:04 period (quarterly data), trying to verify if a ‘monetary myth’ is valid in this context. Results obtained show that, in a first moment, there is no defined pattern for prices during the sample period. However, when we split the sample in two sub-periods, before and after the introduction of Plano Real (an stabilization plan), prices display a countercyclical pattern during the first period (1980:01/1994:02) and a procyclical pattern during the second period
(1994:03/2013:04). Our results are robust to the utilization of alternative detrending methods, business cycle periodicities, as well as different price indexes. These results are important for showing that significant changes occurred in Brazil’s macroeconomic scenario over the last decades.
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