Foreign Price Shocks and Inflation Targeting: Effects on Income and Inflation Inequality

Abstract

Foreign price shocks have significant effects on functional income distribution and on inflation inequality. By increasing prices in domestic currency that are linked to foreign prices, they increase the profit share in some sectors and reduce real wages, in particular of workers whose consumption basket is more sensitive to the price of certain goods (e.g., food prices for low-wage workers). We propose a new extension to the conflicting-claims inflation model by incorporating workers heterogeneity (in terms of nominal income and consumption patterns) in an open economy model following an inflation-targeting regime. Then, we investigate the impacts of foreign price shocks on income and inflation inequality by increasing the foreign inflation rate and analyze how monetary policy influences these outcomes. Our simulation results indicate that a positive foreign price shock increases the profit share and the within-workers inequality (in real terms), since low-wage workers are more affected by these shocks. Yet, such effects are mediated by the strength of the monetary policy's transmission channels (domestic economic activity or nominal exchange rate), indicating that the monetary authority response may exacerbate or attenuate these distributive effects.

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