Abstract:
This article investigates the impacts of shocks in commodity prices, measured by the CRB and IC-Br indexes, on the inflationary dynamics in Brazil, from January 2005 to December 2013, using vector autoregressive (VAR) models. Specifically, the role of the nominal exchange rate was tested as a smoothing mechanism for inflationary effects of those shocks. The main results were the following: (i) Both indexes are robust for anticipating consumer prices changes in Brazil; (ii) the CRB index is more suitable to express the inverse correlation of commodities prices and the nominal exchange rate in Brazil; (iii) the exchange rate changes caused by shocks in commodity prices are, as expected by the literature, an important mechanism to smooth the induced inflationary pressure.
Keywords:
commodities prices; inflation; exchange rate; CRB; IC-Br