This research paper estimates the augmented money demand function for Saudi Arabia while incorporating stock prices as one of the key determinants and utilizing quarterly data spanning over the period of 2010-2018. The estimated money demand function coincides with theoretical expectation regarding income and interest rate over long run. In Particular, the demand for money is statistically significant and positively related with income while it’s negatively related with interest rate. On stock prices, the findings suggest that they are statistically significant and have positive impact on money demand over the long run. Moreover, the estimated error correction model indicates that it takes money demand about two quarters to adjust to its equilibrium condition.

The headline inflation in Saudi Arabia is subject to dramatic changes caused by new policies as the economy is undergoing structural changes since 2016. These changes could mislead policymakers as the underlying inflation may differ from the headline one. Since the announcement of Saudi Vision 2030 in April 2016, the Saudi economy entered a new era where the government has started to reform the economy to reduce its dependence on oil. As a result, many initiatives have been implemented with different impacts on the headline inflation such as imposing new taxes and expat levies and reforming energy prices. This research aims to calculate the core inflation in Saudi Arabia using two different methods: Trimmed Mean, and Median CPI. These two different methods were assessed based on their ability to track trends in the headline inflation over time as measured by the root mean square error and it ability to predict the future headline inflation.