Patterns of regional inflation persistence in a CEE country. The case of Poland

This paper investigates patterns of regional inflation persistence in Poland, a representative CEE country. We first argue that the CEE perspective is relevant in the context of this study due to the recent transitions, incomplete processes of forming forward-looking inflation expectations and pronounced spatial inequalities. Using individual and panel regressions on disaggregate data we provide evidence of the aggregation bias and marked differences in inflation persistence across product categories. Furthermore, we show that cross-regional differences in inflation persistence remain, even after controlling for the product category. While we generally confirm the earlier finding of Vaona and Ascari (2012) that more backward regions exhibit higher CPI inflation persistence, we also show that the picture is more nuanced at the product category level