Gold and inflation(s) – A time-varying relationship

• Published in: Economic modelling Vol. 67; pp. 88 - 101
• Main Authors: Lucey, Brian M., Sharma, Susan Sunila, Vigne, Samuel A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.12.2017
• Subjects: Cointegration; Gold; Inflation; Money supply; Time-varying cointegration; Gold; Money supply; C22; E31; F30; Inflation; Time-varying cointegration; Cointegration; G1; C50
• ISSN: 0264-9993; 1873-6122
• DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2016.10.008

What is the relationship between the price of gold and inflation? How stable is it – over time and across measures of inflation? We examine this for three countries (the USA, the UK and Japan) - over forty years and with a variety of measures of inflation and monetary liquidity. We apply a formal test for time variation and proceed to extract time varying cointegration relationships. Both formal and graphical evidence points to a break in the relationship(s) of gold and official inflation in the mid 1990s in the USA but to less clear results for the UK and Japan. However, gold seems to have offered a protection against an increase in money supply throughout nearly the entire past 40 year period in the US and the UK but failed to do so in Japan. Supporting previous findings we find evidence for a time-varying relationship in cointegration between gold and both predicted and realized inflation in nearly all cases. Contrasting multiple inflation indicators, we find evidence for the importance of money supply in the gold/inflation relationship. •We examine the relationship between gold and inflation.•This relationship is time varying and we surface when and where these breaks occur.•In the UK and USA we find evidence of a split pre and post GFC in this relationship.•Japan, with its deflationary situation, remains a special case.