Interest Rates and Inflation

Abstract

This article is an extension of the work of one of us (Coopersmith, 2011) in deriving the relationship between certain interest rates and the inflation rate of a two component economic system. We use the well-known Fisher relation between the difference of the nominal interest rate and its inflation adjusted value to eliminate the inflation rate and obtain a delay differential equation. We provide computer simulated solutions for this equation over regimes of interest. This paper could be of interest to three audiences: those in Economics who are interested in interest and inflation; those in Mathematics who are interested in examining a detailed analysis of a delay differential equation, which includes a summary of existing results, simulations, and an exact solution; and those in Physics who are interested in non-traditional applications of traditional methods of modeling.