A Two-Pillar Phillips Curve for Switzerland

Dr. Petra Gerlach

Issue
2006-09

Pages
41

JEL classification
E31, E42, E5

Keywords
Inflation, money, Phillips curve, Switzerland

Year
2006

Historically, money growth has played an important role in Swiss monetary policy, until 1999 as a target and from 2000 onwards as an indicator variable. Since the new policy framework focusses on an inflation forecast, the question arises how useful money growth is for predicting future price developments. Using Swiss data, this paper estimates a model first proposed by Gerlach (2004) for the euro area that integrates money growth in an inflation forecasting equation. This "two-pillar" Phillips curve suggests that the low-frequency component of money growth, alongside current inflation and the output gap, helps predict future inflation. These results are confirmed by an alternative money-augmented Phillips curve proposed by Neumann (2003).