The Effect of Inflation on Financial Development Indicators in Iran (2000–2015)

Inflation and financial development are among the factors that influence economic growth and the interaction between them is a major issue in developing countries. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of inflation on financial development indicators in Iran using seasonal data over 2000-2015. To achieve the research objectives, time series data were collected from World Bank and seasonal inflation rate, with 5 financial development indicators were used to measure the research variables. Then I applied Johansen Co-integration Test and Vector Error Correction Model to estimate the proposed model. The results show that inflation has a negatively significant effect on financial depth and also positively significant effect on the ratio of total deposits in banking system to nominal GDP in Iran during the observation period. Also the existence of an equilibrium relationship between inflation and other 3 indicators of Iran`s financial development used in this study was rejected.