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Discussion Paper
Bottlenecks, Shortages, and Soaring Prices in the U.S. Economy
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, sweeping production constraints, combined with surging demand in some industries, have led to shortages, severe congestion, and soaring prices. What will it take for these bottlenecks to resolve and for price pressures to ease?
Discussion Paper
Inflation Perceptions and Inflation Expectations
In this note, we discuss new data on consumers' perceptions of recent inflation from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers (MSC). Our preliminary results show that survey responses indicate inflation perceptions differ widely across individuals (with a slightly wider distribution than for inflation expectations) but the bulk of responses are between zero and five percent.
Discussion Paper
Inflation Perceptions During the Covid Pandemic and Recovery
Since 2016, the Michigan Surveys of Consumers (MSC) have included questions on inflation perceptions—what people believe inflation to have been—that are worded symmetrically with their long-standing questions on inflation expectations. The questions on inflation perceptions are currently posed four times a year—in February, May, August, and November. Using available data at the time, Axelrod, Lebow, and Peneva (2018) concluded that inflation expectations and perceptions are very similar and that if perceptions were to change, expectations were likely to change as well.
Discussion Paper
Will Household Expectations Follow Professional Forecasters'?
In January 2012 the FOMC announced an explicit 2 percent objective for inflation as measured by the price index for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE).
Working Paper
Effects of monetary policy shocks across time and across sectors
Recent empirical research by Olivei and Tenreyro (2007) demonstrates that the effect of monetary policy shocks on output and prices depends on the shock's timing: In the United States, a monetary policy shock that takes place in the first half of the year has a larger effect on output than on prices, while the opposite is true in the second half of the year. Olivei and Tenreyro argue that this finding reflects the fact that a greater fraction of wage rates are re-contracted in the second half of the year, implying that wages (and prices) are less flexible in the first half. In this paper, I ...
Discussion Paper
Residual Seasonality in Core Consumer Price Inflation
The past 10 years have typically seen a pattern in which consumer price inflation has tended to be higher in the first half of the year than in the second half.
Working Paper
Perceptions and Expectations of Inflation by U.S. Households
To better understand inflation expectations, we examine newly available data on U.S. households' inflation perceptions-what people think inflation has been in the past. The overarching summary is that inflation perceptions look similar to inflation expectations. The central tendencies of the responses for perceived inflation over the past five to ten years are similar to those of expected inflation for the next five to ten years, and all are a little above official estimates of inflation. Thus, survey respondents overall do not expect long-term inflation to change in the future relative to ...