Impact of Supply of Money on Food and General Price Indices: A Case of Pakistan

The paper probed the impact of supply of money on food and general price indices by estimating a series of equations taking CPI food, CPI general, WPI food, WPI general, GDP deflator and SPI as measures of inflation and M1, M2 and M3 supply of money as explanatory variables. For analysis, OLS technique is used covering time series data for the years 1975-76 to 2006-07 that was made stationary by Durbin-Watson criterion. AR (1) is used to check autocorrelation. The results for CPI food, CPI general, WPI general, GDP deflator and SPI show that they are negatively related with M1 supply of money. CPI food, CPI general, WPI general, GDP deflator, and SPI are also negatively related with M2 supply of money. The results show that CPI food, CPI general, WPI general, GDP deflator and SPI are positively related with M3 supply of money. It may be concluded that supply of money M1 and M2 affects the food and general indices in the same way. However, M1 supply of money affects the CPI general strongly than CPI food.