The Impact of Government Spending on Inflation through the Inflationary Environment; Smooth Transition Regression Approach

This paper examines the nonlinear relationship between inflation and government spending using quarterly data over the period of 1990-2013, by using Smooth Transition Regression model. Our results suggest a two regime model by using inflation, government expenditure growth, GDP growth and liquidity growth as variables of the model, and first lag of liquidity was recognized as transition variable. This study showed that in the regime of tight money or low growth of liquidity, government expenditure is not inflationary. In regime of low liquidity growth, this variable has low inflationary impact and probably stimulates economic growth. Inflationary expectations in this regime are more effective in causing short run inflation. In expansionary regime (high liquidity growth), the increase in money supply has more effects on inflation rather than production. So monetary and fiscal policies could be used to control inflation and stimulate aggregate demand in low regime. Also in easy money regime, monetary and fiscal discipline can be useful for inflation decrease.