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The literature on price setting has developed extensively in the last decade; albeit predominantly focused on the price setting behaviour of developed countries. This study reviews the survey results of price setting behaviours in the manufacturing sector within a developing economy. More than two thirds of manufacturing firms in South Africa purely follow time-dependent pricing rules; which, when compared to the results of surveys conducted in other international studies is almost three times as much, approximately one third of firms allow for components of state-dependent pricing rules.Higher input costs (cost of raw materials and labour costs) are the most important driver behind price increases. Declining market share is the most important factor behind price reductions. Firms review their prices more often than they actually change them. The median firm in this study has only adjusted its prices twice in the last 12 months.Co-ordination failure and temporary shocks are the most important sources of price stickiness. Mark-up pricing and price discrimination are common practices amongst South African manufacturing firms. The quality of a firm‟s product followed by its price is most important in determining the firm‟s level of competitiveness. Manufacturing firms in South Africa generally adopt a barometric price leadership strategy when setting their prices. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This thesis examines both conventional and unconventional monetary policies in a DSGE model with an interbank market friction. The recent crisis during 2007-2009 affected economies worldwide and forced central banks to implement not just conventional monetary policies, but also direct interventions in financial markets. We investigate a DSGE model with financial frictions, to test conventional and unconventional monetary policies. The thesis starts by using the Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010)'s modelling framework, to examine eight different shocks under imperfect interbank market conditions. Unlike Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010) who consider the two extreme cases for the banking system, I firstly extend the analysis to a case in between the two extreme cases that they examined. The shocks considered include supply and demand shocks and also two shocks from the financial system itself (an interbank market shock and a shock to the deposit market). It is found that a negative shock to the interbank market has only a moderate impact to the banking system. However, a shock to the deposit market has a much stronger impact. Even though the impacts of these shocks are not large it is shown that thefinancial frictions magnify the effects of other shocks. The model is extended to include price stickiness. A modified Taylor rule is analysed to test how conventional monetary policy should respond to the shocks in the presence of financial frictions. Specifically the credit spread is added as a third term in the monetary policy rule. The stabilising properties of the policy rule are analysed and a welfare analysis is conducted. The model is further developed to include unconventional monetary policy in the form of direct lending to private sector firms from the central bank. A policy rule for unconventional policy is tested and its stabilising and welfare properties are analysed.

[pt] Nesse trabalho usamos um modelo DSGE de preços rígidos para estudar os efeitos de uma regra monetária que reage a mudanças no núcleo de inflação ao invés da inflação cheia. Começamos discutindo as dificuldades de inclusão das medidas de núcleo em nosso modelo DSGE e apresentamos uma solução viável. Com base em uma versão estilizada do modelo, mostramos que as volatilidades do núcleo e inflação cheia podem variar bastante dependendo da regra monetária adotada. Os resultados são interpretados em função da contribuição de choques agregados e setoriais na variância do núcleo e inflação cheia. A seguir conduzimos um exercício quantitativo com foco na Austrália. O interesse no último deriva da nossa percepção de que a autoridade monetária australiana começou a responder aos movimentos do núcleo de inflação por volta de 2007. Entretanto, nosso modelo calibrado não é capaz de reproduzir o comportamentos das medidas de inflação depois de 2007. / [en] We use a multi-sector sticky-price DSGE model to study the effects of a monetary rule that responds to changes in the underlying measure of inflation as opposed to headline inflation. We discuss the difficulties of including the underlying measure in our DSGE model and present a feasible solution. Using a stylized version of the model, we show that headline/underlying volatilities can experience significant changes under a policy rule that reacts to the underlying measure. The results are interpreted on the basis of the relevance of aggregate and sectoral shocks to headline and underlying inflation. We then conduct a quantitative exercise focused on Australia. The interest in the latter comes from our belief that monetary authority actually started to react to underlying inflation around 2007. We find that the calibrated model is not able to reproduce the behavior of headline/underlying inflation after 2007.

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Cette thèse contribue au débat sur les politiques de ciblage d’inflation et de transparence des banques centrales en présentant notamment trois essais théoriques et empiriques sur le sujet. Dans le premier essai, nous étudions théoriquement les conditions sous lesquelles il serait optimal pour une banque centrale d’adopter explicitement un régime de ciblage d’inflation. Nous proposons un nouveau cadre théorique qui combine les deux principales raisons avancées dans la littérature pour expliquer les effets réels à court terme de la politique monétaire et qui sont d’une part, la présence d’informations hétérogènes entre les agents économiques (Phelps, 1970 ; Lucas, 1972), et d’autre part, la rigidité des salaires ou des prix (Taylor, 1980 ; Calvo, 1983). Nous analysons ensuite notre problématique dans ce nouveau cadre en considérant l’interaction entre le degré de rigidité des prix, et le degré de complémentarités stratégiques dans la fixation de prix des firmes. Nos résultats montrent que l’adoption d’un régime de ciblage d’inflation dépend fortement de l’importance relative des paramètres du modèle. En particulier, nous montrons que le ciblage d’inflation devrait être toujours adopté lorsque les complémentarités stratégiques sont faibles, alors que dans le cas contraire, il est optimal uniquement lorsque les prix sont assez rigides et que la banque centrale détient des informations suffisamment précises sur les fondamentaux de l’économie. Dans le second essai, nous utilisons la macroéconomie expérimentale afin d’évaluer dans quelle mesure l’annonce de la cible d’inflation est pertinente dans un cadre de ciblage de l’inflation. Nos résultats montrent que lorsque la banque centrale ne se soucie que de la stabilisation de l’inflation, l’annonce de la cible d’inflation n’apporte pas de gain supplémentaire en termes de performances macro-économiques, par rapport à une politique monétaire active (type règle de Taylor). Cependant, si la banque centrale intègre également la stabilisation de l’activité économique dans ses objectifs, la communication de la cible contribue à réduire la volatilité de l’inflation, du taux d’intérêt, et de l’écart de production, bien que leurs niveaux moyens ne soient pas affectés. Ce résultat fournit ainsi une justification pour l’adoption d’un régime de ciblage flexible d’inflation par la majorité des pays ciblant l’inflation. Enfin dans le troisième essai, nous appliquons une analyse transversale ainsi que la technique des variables instrumentales, afin d’analyser les effets de la transparence des banques centrales sur les résultats macroéconomiques dans les pays émergents. Nous construisons un nouvel indice de transparence qui combine certains aspects de l’indice de transparence globale d’Eijffinger et Geraats (2006), avec ceux de l’indice de transparence sur le comité de politique monétaire de Hayo et Mazhar (2011). Nous analysons ensuite le rôle individuel de chaque composante du nouvel indice en termes de réduction du niveau de l’inflation et de sa volatilité, ainsi que de la volatilité du produit. Contrairement à la littérature antérieure, nous trouvons que le nouvel indice de transparence ainsi que ses aspects économique, politique, procédurale et de transparence sur la politique monétaire impactent négativement le niveau moyen de l’inflation, mais pas sa volatilité dans ces pays. L’unique composante du nouvel indice qui permet de réduire à la fois la volatilité de l’inflation et celle de la production est la transparence opérationnelle. Ces résultats s’avèrent robustes aux différentes spécifications de modèles économétriques utilisés dans cet essai. / This dissertation contributes to the debate on inflation targeting and central bantransparency by presenting three theoretical and empirical essays on the topic. In the first essay, we theoretically investigate the conditions under which it would be optimal for a central bank to explicitly adopt an inflation targeting regime. We propose a new theoretical framework that combines the two main frictions put forward in the literature to explain the real short run effects of monetary policy that is, heterogeneous information among agents (Phelps, 1970; Lucas, 1972), and wage or price rigidities (Taylor, 1980; Calvo, 1983). We then analyze our issue in this new framework by considering the interaction between the degree of price stickiness, and the degree of strategic complementarities in firms’ price setting. Our results show that adopting an inflation targeting regime crucially depends on the relative importance of the model’s parameters. In particular, we show that inflation targeting should always be adopted when strategic complementarities are low, while in the opposite case, it is optimal only if prices are sticky enough and the central bank holds sufficiently accurate information on the fundamentals of the economy. In the second essay, we use experimental macroeconomics to evaluate to what extent communication of the inflation target is relevant in an inflation targeting framework. Our results show that first, when the central bank only cares about inflation stabilization, announcing the inflation target does not make a difference in terms of macroeconomic performance compared to a standard active monetary policy. However, if the central bank also cares about the stabilization of the economic activity, communicating the target helps to reduce the volatility of inflation, interest rate, and output gap although their average levels are not affected. This finding provides a rationale for the adoption of flexible inflation targeting by the majority of inflation targeting countries. In the third essay, using a cross-sectional analysis and instrumental variables technique, we analyze the impact of central bank transparency on macroeconomic outcomes in emerging economies. We build a new index of transparency that combines some aspects of the overall Eijffinger and Geraats (2006) transparency index, with those of monetary policy committee transparency developed in Hayo and Mazhar (2011). We then analyze the individual role of each component of the new index in mitigating inflation and its volatility, as well as output volatility. By contrast to the previous literature, we interestingly find that the overall new index of transparency as well as its political, economic, procedural, and policy aspects negatively impact the average level of inflation, but not its volatility in these countries. The unique component of the new index that reduces the volatility of both inflation and output is operational transparency, and these results are robust to different econometric and instruments setting specifications.

Submitted by Joao Luiz Ayres Queiroz da Silva (jluizayres@gmail.com) on 2012-01-13T03:10:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseDoutorado_JoaoAyres_VersaoFinal_Eletronica.pdf: 529477 bytes, checksum: d6770f4fc6e8a2ced7e469151b866323 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Andrea Virginio Machado (andrea.machado@fgv.br) on 2012-02-17T16:50:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseDoutorado_JoaoAyres_VersaoFinal_Eletronica.pdf: 529477 bytes, checksum: d6770f4fc6e8a2ced7e469151b866323 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-02-28T12:07:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseDoutorado_JoaoAyres_VersaoFinal_Eletronica.pdf: 529477 bytes, checksum: d6770f4fc6e8a2ced7e469151b866323 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-07-26 / Esta tese tem como objetivo principal aproximar a evidencia empirica existente sobre os agregados macroeconomicos com as novas evidencias empiricas baseadas nos micro dados de precos ao consumidor, tendo como base os modelos padroes de rigidez de preco utilizados na literatura de politica monetaria. Para isso, esta tese utiliza a base de dados individuais de precos ao consumidor no Brasil fornecida pela Fundacao Getulio Vargas. Especificamente, esta tese foca em tres temas principais: a existencia de variac˜oes temporararias de precos, a heterogeneidade na rigidez de precos entre firmas de um mesmo setor e o formato das func˜oes hazard. Os resultados mostram que: existe de fato uma correlac˜ao entre as variaveis referentes as mudancas temporararias de precos e os agregados macroeconomicos; a heterogeneidade na rigidez de precos entre firmas de um mesmo setor apresenta efeitos significativos sobre a dinamica dos agregados macroeconomicos; e por fim, o formato mais geral da func˜ao hazard proposta nesta tese possibilita novas dinamicas dos agregados macroeconomicos. / This thesis has as its main goal to approximate the existing empirical evidence on macroeconomic aggregates with the new empirical evidences based on micro data on consumer prices, having as a baseline the standard sticky-price models used in the literature on monetary policy. In order to do that, this thesis makes use of a micro data on individual consumer prices in Brazil published by Getulio Vargas Foundation. Specifically, this thesis focus on three main issues: the existence of temporary price changes, the within-sector heterogeneity in price stickiness and the shape of hazard functions. The results show that: there exist a correlation between variables on temporary price changes and macroeconomic aggregates; the within-sector heterogeneity in price stickiness has significant effects on macroeconomic dynamics; and the more general specification of the shape of the hazard function that is proposed in this thesis leads to new dynamics for the macroeconomic aggregates.