Inflation Uncertainty

Investment is seen as one of the most important and influential factors in economic growth and development. It is directly affected by managers' approaches to decision-making because identifying the best investment opportunities to achieve ideal returns is one of the expectations that shareholders and stakeholders have of managers to reduce agency gaps. However, the emergence of managers' overconfident behavior as a foundation for psychological bias can deepen the agency gap due to overestimating project cash flows compared to their real values under inflationary conditions. This study aims to examine the effect of inflation uncertainty on the impact managerial overconfidence has on overinvestment. The statistical population consists of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). One hundred five companies were selected as the sample size by systematic removal sampling reviewed in 2011-2018. Due to its dichotomous dependent variable, this study uses probit regression to test the research hypotheses. The results indicated the significant positive effect of CEO overconfidence on overinvestment. It was also noted that inflation uncertainty strengthens the positive effect of CEO overconfidence on overinvestment. Based on these results, the CEO's decisions as a decision-maker in charge of any company, especially under inflationary conditions, can play a substantial role in future corporate investment levels. Thus, with an increase in behavioral bias, it can be assumed that the company will confront grave competitive challenges under economic conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the inflation and inflation uncertainty in Iran. Using mixed models of self-exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH), the inflation behaviors are examined for the period 1990M05-2013M10. This approach allows testing the hypotheses of Friedman-Ball, Pourgerami-Maskus, Cukierman-Meltzer, and Holland during different inflationary regimes. The results indicate that an increase in Iran’s inflation leads to higher inflation uncertainty, as predicted by Friedman-Ball Hypothesis, while the other three hypotheses are not confirmed. Positive unidirectional causality from inflation to uncertainty seems to be significant only in periods of relatively higher inflation, but not in periods of low inflation. The finding is important because it confirms the existence of regime-dependent effect of inflation on public’s expectations about future inflation; that, in trend, it reduces economic activity and misallocates resources. This is a new insight about asymmetric behaviour of inflation in Iran that has noteworthy implications for policy-makers, especially for price stabilizing and inflation targeting. JEL Classifications: C22, E31.

This article examines the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in the Turkish economy in this period 2004:01-2014:12. This relationship is explored in two ways: a) with the effect of structural breaks; b) without the effect of structural breaks. In fact, with regard to the main structural break have occurred over this period, we examine whether structural break has affected the causal relationship between these two variables or not. Conditional Heteroscedasticity Models are used to obtain inflation uncertainty. The EGARCH model has been identified as the most appropriate model for inflation uncertainty. Lee-Strazicich test is applied for checking any structural break in inflation and inflation uncertainty series. Then, the relation between inflation and its uncertainty is tested using Granger causality Test. This study shows that the structural break has no effect on the Friedman-Ball hypothesis. This hypothesis is supported whether with the structural break or without the structural break. But Cukierman-Meltzer’s view is affected by the structural break. Since this hypothesis imply that inflation uncertainty causes inflation, so politicians need to implement policies that pay more attention to inflation uncertainty.