Privredna kretanja i ekonomska politika 122 / 2010. 53 Budget Deficit, Money Supply and Inflation: The Case of Pakistan RESEARCH PAPER Tahir Mukhtar * Muhammad Zakaria ** Abstract Conventional notions suggest that persistently high budget deficits give rise to inflation, which monetary policy on its own is powerless to prevent. However, empirical evidence does not provide convincing support for such a hypothesis. This paper reexamines the issue in the case of Pakistan using Johansen cointegration analysis. The empirical results suggest that in the long-run inflation is not related to budget deficit but only to supply of money, and supply of money has no causal connection with budget deficit. Hence, the findings imply that the hard government budget constraint does not find empirical support for Pakistan. Keywords: budget deficit, inflation, money supply, cointegration, Pakistan JEL classification: C32, E31, E63 * Tahir Mukhtar, Assistant Professor of Economics, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, e-mail: tahir_rwp2003@yahoo.com. ** Muhammad Zakaria, Assistant Professor of Economics, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad, Pakistan, e-mail: mzakaria80@yahoo.com.