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Journal Article
Price Pressures for U.S. Exporters and a Strong Dollar Have Increased Inflation in Foreign Countries
As the higher demand for imported goods during the pandemic has moderated, U.S. export prices have become an important factor in determining inflationary pressures from the United States. As of 2022:Q2, export prices increased by 11.8 percent annualized, far exceeding the historical average of 3.75 percent. Further, 58 percent of the increase in export prices can be attributed to the recent appreciation of the U.S. dollar, while the remaining 42 percent can be attributed to price pressures for U.S. exporters.
Journal Article
To Reach the Fed’s Inflation Target, Interest Rates May Have to Remain Restrictive for Some Time
The Federal Reserve has raised the federal funds rate by 500 basis points since March 2022. But how tight is the current policy stance? We account for the federal funds rate, inflation expectations, and the natural rate of interest and find that monetary policy has only been restrictive since 2023:Q1. We find that to bring inflation down to 2 percent, the Federal Reserve may have to keep the federal funds rate in restrictive territory for some time.
Journal Article
Labor Markets Are Tight, but Conditions Vary across States
A record 4.4 million employees quit their jobs in September 2021, and many businesses are struggling to fill open positions. Although at a national level the labor market appears historically tight, we show that labor market tightness differs widely across states. Most states have tighter labor markets than before the pandemic, but others have struggled to recover.
Journal Article
Will High Underlying Inflation Persist?
Underlying inflation—the rate of inflation that prevails after temporary imbalances in the economy are resolved—can help policymakers gauge whether current high rates of inflation are likely to persist. Using survey-based inflation expectations, we show that if current inflation forecasts are realized, underlying inflation should decline toward 2 percent in 2024. However, if inflation continues to surprise to the upside, underlying inflation may remain elevated for some time.
Journal Article
Capital Flows and Monetary Policy in Emerging Markets around Fed Tightening Cycles
The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes in 2022–23 raised concerns about spillover effects on smaller emerging market and developing economies. Historically, a higher U.S. federal funds rate has been associated with international investors withdrawing capital from emerging markets, which can lead to lower economic activity and depreciating exchange rates in these markets—and, in turn, greater financial vulnerability. To reduce capital outflows, central banks in emerging markets can tighten their own monetary policy rates to increase yields on debt securities. But raising interest ...
Journal Article
Cutting-Edge Methods Did Not Improve Inflation Forecasting during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Amaze Lusompa and Sai A. Sattiraju investigate whether innovations in time-varying parameter models led to improved inflation forecasting during the pandemic. They find that despite their promise prior to the pandemic, forecasting innovations did not improve the accuracy of inflation forecasts relative to a baseline time-varying parameter model during the pandemic. Their results suggest that forecasters may need to develop a new class of forecasting models, introduce new forecasting variables, or rethink how they forecast to yield more effective inflation forecasts during extreme events.
Journal Article
Recent Appreciation in the U.S. Dollar Unlikely to Have Large Effect on Domestic Inflation
The U.S. dollar has appreciated more than 8.5 percent since May 2021, raising questions about potential effects on domestic inflation. If imports are billed in foreign currencies, then a strong dollar could reduce import prices and therefore domestic inflation. However, U.S. imports are almost entirely invoiced in U.S. dollars, dampening this effect. We find that the recent appreciation in the U.S. dollar has a negligible effect on domestic inflation as measured by the core price index for personal consumption expenditures.
Working Paper
The Missing Tail Risk in Option Prices
This paper contributes to the literature on deviations from rational expectations in financial markets and to the literature on evaluating density forecasts. We first develop a novel statistic to evaluate the overall accuracy of distributional forecasts, and find two methods that yield accurate distributional forecasts. We then propose another statistic to examine the relative accuracy over the entire distribution range. Our results indicate more oil price realizations in the left tail than predicted. We argue that this finding points to a persistent behavioral forecasting bias and a ...