Relation Between Inflation and Capital Market in India

Abstract

Capital market has significant influence on the inflationary situation in an economy both in the short run and in the long run. The general determinants which affect capital market are share indices, stock prices, prices of gold and silver, interest rate, exchange rate and even money supply can be treated as influencing variable when money is treated as capital. In this paper the author examined the impact of capital market on inflation in India during 1980-2022 taking CPI and WPI as the indicators of inflation and gold price, silver price, BSE index, BSE market capitalization, money supply and rupee dollar nominal exchange rate are considered as the indicators of capital market. Augmented Dickey-Fuller test was applied to verify unit root for all variables including break unit roots and the author calculated growth rates during 1980 – 2022 using the simple semi-log linear trend model. Author applied Johansen cointegration test and vector error correction models among the variables in both the cases of CPI and WPI and calculated short run causality through Wald test and long run causality through cointegrating equation. In VECM, the paper found one significant cointegrating equation in case of CPI and found three significant cointegrating equations in WPI. The paper found that CPI has long run causal relationships with BSE index, BSE market capitalisation, money supply and rupee dollar exchange rate and WPI has long run cointegrating relationships with BSE market capitalisation, money supply and rupee dollar exchange rate respectively. Rupee dollar exchange rate has short run causal relationships with CPI and again CPI and BSE index has bidirectional short run causality. According to impulse response functions, the responses of CPI to gold price, BSE market capitalization and money supply have been approaching towards equilibrium but finally diverged away from equilibrium. There are significant short run causalities from BSE index and money supply to WPI. The impulse response of WPI to gold price, silver price, BSE index, BSE market capitalisation and exchange rate of rupee have been converging towards equilibrium many times although diverged finally. The model can be modified by including interest rate, share prices, bond prices under monthly data analysis.