DETERMINANTS OF INFLATION IN INDIA: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Inflation is a continual increase in general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. It is caused by many factors, important among them are excess of demand of goods and services over supply, macroeconomic performance, money supply, economic policies implications, environmental factors etc. A number of researchers in the past made attempts to identify determinants of inflation and to investigate the impact of identified variables on inflation in European and also in some Asian economies. But, in context of India, not many studies can be traced in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the impact of selected variables on inflation in India. The paper considers CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation as dependent variable and a set of independent macroeconomic variables, which includes Gross Domestic Product, Money Supply, Deposit Rate, Prime Lending Rate, Exchange Rate, Trade Volume (Value of Imports and Exports) and Crude Oil Prices. The empirical analysis covers the quarterly data series for ten financial years from 2002Q1 to 2012Q1. The collected data is analyzed using ADF Unit root test, Granger Causality test, and the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) technique.