Grey power and the Economy: Aging and Inflation Across Advanced Economies

Abstract

What explains the cross-national variation in inflation rates across countries? In contrast to most literature, which emphasizes the role of ideas and institutions, this paper focuses on electoral politics and argues that ageing leads to lower inflation rates. Countries with a larger share of elderly exhibit lower inflation because older people are both more inflation averse and politically powerful, forcing parties seeking their votes to pursue lower inflation. Logistic regression analyses of survey data confirm that (1) older people are more inflation averse and (2) more likely to punish incumbents for inflation. Panel data regression analysis shows that (3) social democratic parties have more economically orthodoxy manifestos in European countries with more elderly people and that (4) the share of elderly is negatively correlated with inflation in both a sample of 21 OECD economies and a larger sample of 175 countries. Ageing therefore pushes governments to pursue lower inflation.

Aging in the Context of HIV/AIDS: Spaces for Renegotiation and Recomposition of Mutual Solidarity in Burkina Faso

“…27 In the context of Burkina Faso and in the broader context of West African societies, the transition to old age, even if it is associated with loss, particularly on the physical and economic level is expected to be combined with social or “gray” power. 28,29 Indeed, within the relationship between elders and cadets, the former occupy the role of social elders, and as such, they are granted a range of powers and privileges at the social, symbolic, and normally economic level. 28,30 For men, for instance, seniority, according to Pochet, 31 “is doubly valued socially through the father/son hierarchy and through the position within the siblings, particularly by the opposition between elders/cadets.” Seniority in the family is synonymous with authority, wisdom, and knowledge.…”

“…28,29 Indeed, within the relationship between elders and cadets, the former occupy the role of social elders, and as such, they are granted a range of powers and privileges at the social, symbolic, and normally economic level. 28,30 For men, for instance, seniority, according to Pochet, 31 “is doubly valued socially through the father/son hierarchy and through the position within the siblings, particularly by the opposition between elders/cadets.” Seniority in the family is synonymous with authority, wisdom, and knowledge. Seniors can also have a great deal of decision-making power.…”

What is new and what is nationalist about Europe's new nationalism? Explaining the rise of the far right in Europe

“…Lucassen and Lubbers ; Rydgren ; Sniderman et al ). Even within the new transnational cleavage, there are therefore good reasons, both theoretically and empirically, to continue to focus on the impact of material factors and self‐interest on policy preferences and party choice (Häusermann and Schwander ; Marx ; Rehm ; Rueda ; Vlandas , Vlandas ) and perceptions of labour market competition with immigrants (Mayda ). This suggests that immigration attitudes are not necessarily value based and that the culture versus economy distinction may be a false dichotomy (Burns and Gimpel ; Gidron and Hall ).…”

The ordered weighted average inflation

“…Inflation has been an interest for countries since Friedman's [1] novel lecture about the relationship between inflation and growth and how the uncertainty in the first one can affect the second one, arguing that the noise in the price systems that is caused by economic institutions and factors reduces the economic efficiency and affects other variables such as employment and enterprise performance [2][3].…”

“…The parameter values assigned to and are the official ones that are used by the Mexican government 3. Subjacent inflation is the concept that refers to the evolution of the prices of a representative basket of consumer goods and services from which energy products and unprocessed foods are excluded 4.…”