Inflation dynamics in Mongolia : understanding the roller coaster / Steven Barnett, Julia Bersch and Yasuhisa Ojima.

"July 2012."

Includes bibliographical references.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (IMF, viewed November 5, 2012).

Inflation in Mongolia resembles a roller coaster ride with sharp rises and steep drops. Understanding why is critical for formulating and assessing monetary policy. Food prices are found to be a key driver of inflation, and, not surprising given Mongolia's geography, are determined primarily by local supply conditions, highly seasonal, and subject to large but short-lived shocks (usually weather related). Nonetheless, demand factors are also found to be significant in explaining price movements and empirical evidence suggests that a 10 percent increase in government wages, for example, would push up underlying inflation by 1 percentage point. So, while inflation will remain volatile due to agricultural shocks, there is space for macroeconomic stabilization policy to help reduce inflation volatility.

Cover; Contents; I. Introduction; Figures; 1. Inflation: Headline CPI; 2. Inflation, 1995-2010; II. A Closer Look at the Consumer Price Index; 3. Export Earnings and Fiscal Spending; 4. Administered Price Changes; 5. Inflation: Contributions to Change; 6. Inflation Rates; Tables; 1. Descriptive Statistics of the Overall Inflation Rate and the Main Subcomponents; 7 Seasonal Factors; 8. Inflation Rates (In percent, seasonally adjuted annualized rate month-on-month); 9. Inflation Rates (In percent, seasonally adjusted annualized rate).

III. Understanding Inflation Through its Time Series PropertiesA. Inflation Persistence and Expectations; 2. Persistence in CPI and its Subcomponents; 10. Inflation: Persistence Shocks; 3. Mongolia and Other Copper Producers; B. Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) Analysis; 11 Impulse Response Functions; IV. Demand-pull Factor of Inflation; A. The Role of Fiscal Spending; 12 Variance Decomposition; 13. Fiscal Spending (In percent of non-mineral GDP); 14. Fiscal Spending (In percent, 4-quarter moving average, year-on-year); 4. Inflationary Impact of Government Spending, 2000-11.

B. The Role of Output Gaps and the Exchange Rate15. Mongolia: Output Gap (2000Q1-2011Q4); 16. Exchange Rates; 5. Phillips-Curve Estimation; V. International Context; A. Commodity Prices; 17. Food Prices; 18. Rice Prices; 19. Wheat and Flour Prices; B. Price Spillovers from Neighboring Countries-China and Russia; 6. China and Russia; VI. Conclusion; Annex. The Ulaanbaatar and National CPIs; References.

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