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Surging House Prices Expected to Propel Rent Increases, Push Up Inflation
The inflation rates of rent and owners’ equivalent rent (OER)—the amount of rent equivalent to the cost of ownership—have declined sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic began in February 2020. However, we expect rent inflation and OER inflation to accelerate in the years to come.
Journal Article
Inflation measurement gives us food for thought
Global food prices are soaring. Since February 2009, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization world food price index has risen roughly 67 percent, surpassing the previous peak in June 2008 (Chart 1). The last food price surge, from early 2007 to mid-2008, prompted riots in many countries; the latest rise has also fueled riots and may have been a factor in political unrest sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East.
Discussion Paper
Excluding items from personal consumption expenditures inflation
Core inflation measures constructed by excluding particularly volatile items from the price index have a long history. The most common such measures are indexes excluding the prices of food and energy items. This paper attempts to shed some statistical light on the impact of excluding certain items from the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. In particular, I am interested in the trade-off between reducing shortrun volatility (relative to the volatility of the headline index) and possibly distorting the measurement of inflation over longer horizons. Some of the questions this ...
Working Paper
Inequality, inflation, and central bank independence
What can account for the different contemporaneous inflation experiences of various countries, and of the same country over time? We present an analysis of the determination of inflation from a political economy perspective. We document a positive correlation between income inequality and inflation and then present a theory of the determination of inflation outcomes in democratic societies that illustrates how greater inequality leads to greater inflation, owing to a desire by voters for wealth redistribution. We conclude by showing that democracies with more independent central banks tend to ...
Journal Article
Health care services depress recent PCE inflation readings
Health care services, which historically helped push core measures of inflation higher, have restrained recent readings. Among them is the personal consumption expenditures price index, favored by Federal Reserve policymakers deliberating interest rate changes.
Working Paper
Trimmed mean PCE inflation
Research over the past decade has led to improved measures of core inflation in the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. This paper discusses the application of some of the insights and techniques of that line of research to the Federal Reserve Bard of Governors? preferred inflation gauge, the price index for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE). The result is a new measure of core PCE inflation?the trimmed mean PCE?and a somewhat different characterization of the economy?s recent inflation experience. ; Compared to the story told by the usual ?excluding food and energy? measure, the trimmed mean ...
Working Paper
Campbell and Cochrane meet Melino and Yang: reverse engineering the surplus ratio in a Mehra-Prescott economy
The habit model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999) specifies a process for the 'surplus ratio'-the excess of consumption over habit, relative to consumption-rather than an evolution for the habit stock. It's not immediately apparent if their formulation can be accommodated within the Markov chain framework of Mehra and Prescott (1985). This note illustrates one way to create a Campbell and Cochrane-like model within the Mehra-Prescott framework. A consequence is that we can perform another sort of reverse-engineering exercize-we can calibrate the resulting model to match the stochastic discount ...
Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index Gives Insight into COVID-19’s Economic Impact
To gain insight into the economic impact of the pandemic, we developed an index of mobility and engagement, based on geolocation data collected from a large sample of mobile devices.