Study of Gold, Stocks and Foreign Currency as Hedges against Inflation on Different Time Horizons in Iran

This paper aims to study the role of gold, stock and foreign currency as hedges against inflation in Iran based on monthly data over period 2000-2016 by using a novel approach with nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags (NARDL). To achieve this goal, the effect of positive and negative inflation shocks  on price of these assets is estimated separately. The results show that all assets (foreign currency, gold and stock) are hedges against inflation in Iranian economy. As inflation rate increases, the prices of these assets also increase, but the magnitude and type of their hedge against inflation vary in different time horizons. The results show that the effects of both positive and negative inflation shocks on gold price are symmetric in the short-run, but in the long run, the effect of positive inflation shocks on gold price are more than negative shocks. The results of the inflationary coverage of foreign currency show that the effects of the positive and negative inflation shocks on it are asymmetric in the short-run and long-run; while these effects are symmetric for stocks in both short- and long-term. Furthermore, stocks is a proper hedge against inflation in the long run and not only it maintains purchasing power, but also it increases value of investors’ assets. Moreover, the inflationary coverage of foreign currency and gold are the same and less than rising inflation, but exchange rate is a hedge in the short-run and gold plays the role of hedge against inflation in the long-run.