Inflation and growth: new evidence from a dynamic panel threshold analysis

We introduce a dynamic panel threshold model to estimate inflation thresholds for long-term economic growth. Advancing on Hansen (J Econom 93:345–368, <CitationRef CitationID="CR14">1999</CitationRef>) and Caner and Hansen (Econom Theory 20:813–843, <CitationRef CitationID="CR7">2004</CitationRef>), our model allows the estimation of threshold effects with panel data even in case of endogenous regressors. The empirical analysis is based on a large panel-dataset including 124 countries. For industrialized countries, our results confirm the inflation targets of about 2% set by many central banks. For non-industrialized countries, we estimate that inflation rates exceeding 17% are associated with lower economic growth. Below this threshold, however, the correlation remains insignificant. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013