Um teste da hipótese de inflação inercial no Brasil

Abstract

Inflation has been a major problem for the Brazilian economy. In the early eighties the inertial inflation approach became very influential in Brazil. According to this approach the inflation rate has a path determined by its own past. It is persistent, shocks aside, today's inflation equals last period's rate of inflation. The purpose of this paper is to reevaluate the inertial inflation hypothesis from an empirical perspective. After briefly mentioning the theoretical ideas behind the inertial approach, the inflationary persistence (inertia) is then empirically evaluated using time series techniques. The results show that there is inertia, however its importance is not large.