Search Results
Discussion Paper
How Much Do Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation Dynamics?
Inflation dynamics are often described by some form of the Phillips curve. Named after A. W. Phillips, the British economist whose study of U.K. wage and unemployment data laid the groundwork, the Phillips curve denotes an inverse relationship between inflation and some measure of economic slack. A much-discussed issue in the literature is how forward-looking this relationship is. In this post, we address this question using a flexible version of the New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) to illustrate the key role that expectations play in inflation dynamics.
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U.S. wage and price dynamics: a limited information approach
This paper analyzes the dynamics of prices and wages using a limited information approach to estimation. I estimate a two-equation model for the determination of prices and wages derived from an optimization-based dynamic model in which both goods and labor markets are monopolistically competitive; prices and wages can be reoptimized only at random intervals; and, when prices and wages are not reoptimized, they can be partially adjusted to previous-period aggregate inflation. The estimation procedure is a two-step minimum distance estimation that exploits the restrictions imposed by the model ...
Discussion Paper
Forecasting with the FRBNY DSGE Model
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) has built a DSGE model as part of its efforts to forecast the U.S. economy. On Liberty Street Economics, we are publishing a weeklong series to provide some background on the model and its use for policy analysis and forecasting, as well as its forecasting performance. In this post, we briefly discuss what DSGE models are, explain their usefulness as a forecasting tool, and preview the forthcoming pieces in this series.
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A Large Bayesian VAR of the United States Economy
We model the United States macroeconomic and financial sectors using a formal and unified econometric model. Through shrinkage, our Bayesian VAR provides a flexible framework for modeling the dynamics of thirty-one variables, many of which are tracked by the Federal Reserve. We show how the model can be used for understanding key features of the data, constructing counterfactual scenarios, and evaluating the macroeconomic environment both retrospectively and prospectively. Considering its breadth and versatility for policy applications, our modeling approach gives a reliable, reduced form ...
Journal Article
Does inflation reduce productivity?
Discussion Paper
Is the Recent Inflationary Spike a Global Phenomenon?
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation rose almost simultaneously in most economies around the world. After peaking in mid-2022, inflation then went into decline—a fall that was just as universal as the initial rise. In this post, we explore the interrelation of inflation dynamics across OECD countries by constructing a measure of the persistence of global inflation. We then study the extent to which the persistence of global inflation reflects broad-based swings, as opposed to idiosyncratic country-level movements. Our main finding is that the spike and subsequent moderation ...
Journal Article
Sources of New York employment fluctuations
The authors analyze employment growth in the metropolitan region and its relationship to employment in the United States as a whole. They identify a strong cyclical link between the region and the nation, punctuated by occasional, persistent shifts in the region's underlying growth rate. Some shifts are found to be related to industry factors, such as the restructuring of financial services in the late 1980s. However, the authors attribute a large and increasing share of New York employment fluctuations to region-specific factors.
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Do expected future marginal costs drive inflation dynamics?
This article discusses a more general interpretation of the two-step minimum distance estimation procedure proposed in earlier work by Sbordone. The estimator is again applied to a version of the New Keynesian Phillips curve, in which inflation dynamics are driven by the expected evolution of marginal costs. The article clarifies econometric issues, addresses concerns about uncertainty and model misspecification raised in recent studies, and assesses the robustness of previous results. While confirming the importance of forward-looking terms in accounting for inflation dynamics, it suggests ...
Report
A search for a structural Phillips curve
The foundation of the New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) is a model of price setting with nominal rigidities that implies that the dynamics of inflation are well explained by the evolution of real marginal costs. In this paper, we analyze whether this is a structurally invariant relationship. We first estimate an unrestricted time-series model for inflation, unit labor costs, and other variables, and present evidence that their joint dynamics are well represented by a vector autoregression (VAR) with drifting coefficients and volatilities. We then apply a two-step minimum distance estimator ...
Working Paper
Optimized Taylor Rules for Disinflation When Agents are Learning
Highly volatile transition dynamics can emerge when a central bank disinflates while operating without full transparency. In our model, a central bank commits to a Taylor rule whose form is known but whose coefficient are not. Private agents learn about policy parameters via Bayesian updating. Under McCallum's (1999) timing protocol, temporarily explosive dynamics can arise, making the transition highly volatile. Locally-unstable dynamics emerge when there is substantial disagreement between actual and perceived feedback parameters. The central bank can achieve low average inflation, but its ...