IMPLEMENTING FISCAL OR MONETARY POLICY IN TIME OF CRISIS? RUNNING GRANGER CAUSALITY TO TEST THE PHILLIPS CURVE IN SOME EURO ZONE COUNTRIES

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence about the theoretical relationship between inflation and unemployment in 9 European countries. Based on two major goals for economic policymakers namely, to keep both inflation and unemployment low, we use the ingredients of the Phillips curve to orient fiscal and monetary policies. These policies are prerogative for the achievement of a desirable combination of unemployment and inflation. More in detail, we attempt to address two basic issues. One strand of the study examines the size and sign of the impact of unemployment rate on percentage changes in inflation. In our preferred econometric model, we have made explicit the evidence according to which one unit increase (%) in unemployment reduces inflation of roughly 0.73 percent, on average. Next, we turn to the question concerning the causal link between inflation and unemployment and we derive a political framework enables to orient European policymakers in the implementation of either fiscal or monetary policy. In this context, by means of the Granger causality test, we mainly find evidence of a directional causality which runs from inflation to unemployment in 4 out of 9 European countries under analysis. This result implies that political authorities of Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy should implement monetary policy in order to achieve pre-established targets of unemployment and inflation. In the same context, a directional causality running from unemployment to inflation has been found in France and Cyprus suggesting that a reduction in the unemployment level can be achieved through controlling fiscal policy. However, succeeding in this goal may lead to an increasing demand for goods and services which, in turn, might cause a higher inflation than expected. Finally, while there is no statistical evidence of a causal link between unemployment and inflation in Finland and Greece, a bidirectional causality has been found in Estonia. This implies that preestablished targets of inflation and unemployment can be achieved by political authorities by coordinating the monetary and fiscal policy.