Money-income Link in Developing Countries: a Heterogeneous Dynamic Panel Data Approach

The question whether real money causes real output appears to be important for many economists working in the area of macroeconomics and, has been subjected to a variety of modern econometric techniques, producing conflicting results. One often applied method to investigate the empirical relationship between money and real activity is Granger causality analysis [Granger (1969)]. Using this approach, the causality question can be sharply posed as whether past values of money help to predict current values of output. This concept, however, should be clearly distinguished from any richer philosophical notion of causality [cf. Holland (1986)]. Present paper examines the relationship between money (both M1 and M2) and income (Real GDP) for 15 developing countries using a newly developed heterogeneous dynamic panel data approach.1 Sims (1972) postulated “the hypothesis that causality is unidirectional from money to income agrees with the post war U.S. data, whereas the hypothesis that causality is unidirectional from income to money is rejected”. Since then a voluminous literature has emerged testing the direction of causality.2 Some studies have tested the relationship between these variables and the direction of causality for a particular country using time series techniques [e.g., Hsiao (1979) for Canada, Stock and Watson (1989) for U.S. data, Friedman and Kuttner (1992, 1993) for U.S. data, Thoma (1994) for U.S. data, Christiana and Ljungquist (1988) for U.S. data, Davis and Tanner (1997) for U.S. data.