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

Grey Power and the Economy: Aging and Inflation Across Advanced Economies. Tim Vlandas. Comparative Political Studies, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2993934

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 article focuses on electoral politics and argues that aging 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 analysis of survey data confirms that older people are more inflation averse and more likely to punish incumbents at the ballot box for inflation. Panel data regression analysis shows that social democratic parties have more economically orthodox manifestos in European countries with more elderly people, and that the share of elderly is negatively correlated with inflation in both a sample of 21 advanced economies and a larger sample of 175 countries. Aging therefore pushes governments to pursue lower inflation.

Keywords: inflation, aging, grey power, economic policy, independent central banks, economic orthodoxy