Background: In the wake of recent spikes of inflationary uncertainty, the phenomenon of“greedflation” has emerged. The phenomenon regards the idea of firms exploiting times of inflationary uncertainty to their benefit at the cost of consumer welfare. Building upon scarce previous literature on the subject, this thesis expands upon established models and contributes to new insights into the topic. Purpose: The primary objective was to investigate whether there were indications of Swedish firms exploiting times of increasing inflation uncertainty to enhance their profitability. The thesis wished to find if there is a relationship between inflation uncertainty and both net profit margins and gross margins. By examining the phenomenon of “greedflation” the goal was to extend the empirical findings and contribute with new methodologies to establish new avenues of exploring the subject. Method: The thesis employed a positivistic, deductive research approach together with a quantitative strategy. The data was collected from databases such as “Thompson Refinitiv Eikon”, “Statistics Sweden” and the “Swedish Central Bank”. The statistical approach was to develop panel data regressions, together with a framework to measure “greedflation”, which allowed for statistical analysis of the data cross-sectionally, over time. Conclusion: Findings reveal that the phenomenon of “greedflation” cannot be entirely proved during the entire sample period. However, dwelling into sectoral and subperiod effects, some signs of exploitative behaviour, or “greedflation” can be seen during 2022 and 2023. Additionally, during periods of high inflationary uncertainty, profit margins tended to rise across sectors, hinting at the presence of "greedflation", although inflation was probably influenced by other effects instead of corporate pricing behaviour.

published_or_final_version / Asian Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

<p><strong><p>Abstract</p><p>The debate concerning the importance of central bank independence on inflation rates has, for several years been ambiguous. Some economists, among which Nobel Prize Laureates Kydland and Prescott (1977) argue that central bank independence is crucial to the achievement of price-stability. Others, such as Daunfeltd and de Luna (2008) could in their studies not find any substantial arguments in favour of central bank independence as the key, explaining the successful achievement and maintenance of a low and stable inflation goal.</p><p>In this paper, we use One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Pearson’s correlation test to examine the impact, if any, that central bank independence has on inflation rates. We focus our analysis on a ten year period from 1999 to 2009, looking at the Swedish Central Bank; the Riksbank, and the European Central Bank; the ECB.</p><p>The empirical analysis revealed no negative correlation between price-stability and central bank independence. In fact, we found with a 99 % confidence interval that the correlation coefficient between these two variables was only 0.12, a rather weak positive relationship. In Sweden and the Euro-zone we discovered that price stability was achieved years before the concerned central banks were officially declared independent. Also, although the world’s most independent central bank, the ECB did not show the lowest inflation rates.</p><p>These indices suggest that the decisive elements behind a state's low inflation lies beyond the parameters of its central bank. This provides reason to question the belief that institutional reforms granting central banks more independence are necessary for the achievement and upkeep of price-stability.</p><p>According to previous research and our own analysis on this topic, a true commitment to sound fiscal policy and a strong inflation adverse social attitude appear to be the variables that most strongly determine the outcome of a low inflation goal. Thereby constituting the backbones without which price-stability can neither be achieved nor maintained.</p></strong></p>

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<p>I study the link between capital markets and sources of macroeconomic risk. In chapter 1 I show that expected inflation risk is priced in the cross section of stock returns even after controlling for cash flow growth and volatility risks. Motivated by this evidence I study a long run risk model with a built-in inflation non-neutrality channel that allows me to decompose the real stochastic discount factor into news about current and expected cash flow growth, news about expected inflation and news about volatility. The model can successfully price a broad menu of assets and provides a setting for analyzing cross sectional variation in expected inflation risk premium. For industries like retail and durable goods inflation risk can account for nearly a third of the overall risk premium while the energy industry and a broad commodity index act like inflation hedges. Nominal bonds are exposed to expected inflation risk and have inflation premiums that increase with bond maturity. The price of expected inflation risk was very high during the 70's and 80's, but has come down a lot since being very close to zero over the past decade. On average, the expected inflation price of risk is negative, consistent with the view that periods of high inflation represent a "bad" state of the world and are associated with low economic growth and poor stock market performance. In chapter 2 I look at the way capital markets react to predetermined macroeconomic announcements. I document significantly higher excess returns on the US stock market on macro release dates as compared to days when no macroeconomic news hit the market. Almost the entire equity premium since 1997 is being realized on days when macroeconomic news are released. At high frequency, there is a pattern of returns increasing in the hours prior to the pre-determined announcement time, peaking around the time of the announcement and dropping thereafter.</p> / Dissertation

Inflation targeting has become an increasingly popular regime among emerging markets. Focusing on the experience of inflation targeting adoption in the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States, this thesis highlights the main features of the inflation targeting framework. A clear economic condition bringing these countries together is considered the dollarization issue which gains importance when designing the inflation targeting framework. The empirical study on the impact of inflation targeting in inflation, inflation volatility, output, output volatility and deposit dollarization shows clear benefits of inflation targeting in terms of inflation and inflation volatility, which are not achieved at the expense of output growth. Also, dollarization does not harm the positive impact of inflation targeting on inflation.

It is likely that the early Universe was pervaded by a whole host of scalar fields which are ubiquitous in particle physics models and are employed everywhere from driving periods of accelerated expansion to the spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetries. Just as these scalar fields are important from a particle physics point of view, they can also have serious implications for the evolution of the Universe. In particular in extreme cases their dynamical evolution can lead to the failure of the synthesis of light elements or to exceed the dark matter bound in contrast to observation. These scalar fields are not however isolated systems and interact with the degrees of freedom which comprise their environment. As such two interrelated effects may arise; fluctuations and dissipation. These effects, which are enhanced at finite temperature, give rise to energy transfer between the scalar field and its environment and as such should be taken into account for a complete description of their dynamical evolution. In this thesis we will look at these effects within the inflationary era in a scenario termed warm inflation where amongst other effects, thermal fluctuations can now act as a source of primordial density perturbations. In particular we will show how a model of warm inflation based on a simple quartic potential can be brought back into agreement with Planck data through renormalizable interactions, whilst it is strongly disfavoured in the absence of such effects. Moving beyond inflation, we will consider the effect of fluctuation-dissipation dynamics on other cosmological scalar fields, deriving dissipation coefficients within common particle physics models. We also investigate how dissipation can affect cosmological phase transitions, potentially leading to late time periods of accelerated expansion, as well as presenting a novel model of dissipative leptogenesis.

Recovery from the Great Depression began in March 1933, simultaneous to Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration. However, the pace of that recovery between that date and the Second World War was extremely uneven with some dramatic starts and stops. Between March and July 1933, manufacturing production rose 78%, production of durable goods was up 199%, total industrial production rose 57%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 71%.Then the economy contracted sharply again beginning in August 1933-the July 1933 level of industrial production was not reached again until August 1935. This paper addresses two questions. What factors were responsible for bringing about the sharp recovery in the spring of 1933 and what factors brought this short-lived economic surge to an end? (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.