Fighting inflation in Mexico: Theory and evidence

Abstract

Mexico adopted the inflation targeting strategy in 2002, and this came together with declining inflation. According to the economic authorities, this also brought about lower pass-through of exchange rate changes into inflation. The objective of this article is to test the main hypotheses of Mexico’s prize-stabilization strategy. As a preliminary step, we show evidence whereby the interest rate has not the impact on demand assumed in the conventional view. We then estimate econometric models, which show first of all that inflation depends essentially on the evolution of labor and input costs. Then we demonstrate that higher employment and higher wages associated with higher output do not necessarily entail higher labor costs because productivity also increases when output rises. In the final section, we set forth our main conclusions, which cast doubts on some crucial aspects of the inflation targeting strategy, and propose a different interpretation about why inflation declined in this country.

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