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Working Paper
A New Reason to Hate Grocery Inflation: Measuring and Interpreting Inflation Heterogeneity
The 2021-2022 inflation episode presented the first opportunity to examine inflation and price dispersion using U.S. scanner data in a high-inflation environment. Data from 50,000 outlets reveals that price changes across similar goods grew more dispersed in 2022 before falling again in 2023. This paper documents how price change dispersion interacts with households’ product choices to generate substantial inflation heterogeneity. Household-level inflation rates exhibit a 1.4 percentage point interquartile range in 2019, which grew to 4.0 percentage points in 2022 before falling back to 1.6 ...
Discussion Paper
How Much Does Home Equity Extraction Matter for Spending?
In this note, we investigate recent trends in home equity extraction and how these trends may have impacted household spending and residential improvements. Home equity extractions—which rose and fell with house prices in the 1990s and 2000s—have remained sluggish in the recovery despite low interest rates and gains in home equity. Compared to the mid-2000s, equity extractions have fallen especially among younger households and those with lower credit scores and higher leverage, suggesting that mortgage credit supply is likely tighter than before the recession, at least for portions of ...