The chief goal of this paper is to analyze the Brazilian inflationary dynamics, and to measure the degree of inertia in such dynamics. To that end, we start by reporting Monte Carlo simulation results on the finite-sample performance of different variants of the variance ratio, a well know measure of long-run persistence of shocks. The simulations are performed under normal and nonnormal innovations, and also with and without outliers and inliers. Overall, the results favor a robust variant of the variance ratio we propose. The empirical results for Brazil suggest that the degree of inertia in this country is substantially larger than what was found by Campêlo and Cribari-Neto (Revista Brasileira de Economia 57, 713-739, 2003); indeed, in several periods of the recent economic history we find full inertia. However, the degree of inertia since the implementation of the Real Plan is small. We also present empirical results for Argentina, Chile and Mexico.
