Relationship between Budget Structure, Monetary Dynamics and Inflation in the Iranian Economy

Iran’s economy has experienced an average inflation rate of 18.77 percent during the period of 1979-2010. Many economists believe that the budget deficits are one of the main determinants of the chronic and relatively high inflation. This paper investigates the relationship between budget deficits and inflation. Dynamics of Iran’s monetary sector, based on the three cointegration relations i.e. the money market, the purchasing power parity and the Fisher inflation parity, is studied by SVARX model. The results indicate that, the operating deficits lead to increasing prices through real money balances and repression of interest rates in the long run, and thereby inflation is a monetary phenomenon. However, the inflation is mainly related to the government budget and, through monetary channels in return, inflation affects real money balances and interest rates. Moreover, the continuing operating deficits is not due to inflation, but it mainly depends on the capital surplus and repression of the interest rates. In the short run, both increasing the operating deficits and decreasing the capital balance lead to an increase in the budget deficits, but their inflationary effects are different. The impact of reducing capital balance on inflation is temporary, while increasing the operating deficits have more permanent effects on inflation, relative prices and exchange rates.