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Report
The Unemployment-Inflation Trade-off Revisited: The Phillips Curve in COVID Times
Using a New Keynesian Phillips curve, we document the rapid and persistent increase in the natural rate of unemployment, ut*, in the aftermath of the pandemic and characterize its implications for inflation dynamics. While the bulk of the inflation surge is attributed to temporary supply factors, we also find an important role for current and expected negative unemployment gaps. Through the lens of the model, the 2022-23 disinflation was driven by the expectation that the unemployment gap will close through a progressive decline in ut* and a rise in the unemployment rate. This implies that ...
Working Paper
The Active Role of the Natural Rate of Unemployment during Cyclical Recoveries
We propose that the natural rate of unemployment has an active role in the business cycle, in contrast to the prevailing view that the rate is essentially constant. We demonstrate that this tendency to treat the natural rate as near-constant would explain the surprisingly low slope of the Phillips curve. We show that the natural rate closely tracked the actual rate during the long recovery that began in 2009 and ended in 2020. We explain how the common finding of research in the Phillips-curve framework of low-often extremely low-response of inflation to unemployment could be the result of ...
Working Paper
A State-Level Analysis of Okun's Law
Okun's law is an empirical relationship that measures the correlation between the deviation of the unemployment rate from its natural rate and the deviation of output growth from its potential. This relationship is often referred to by policy makers and used by forecasters. In this paper, we estimate Okun's coefficients separately for each U.S. state using an unobserved components framework and find variation of the coefficients across states. We exploit this heterogeneity of Okun's coefficients to directly examine the potential factors that shape Okun's law, and find that indicators of more ...
Working Paper
Age and Gender Differentials in Unemployment and Hysteresis
We use a time-varying panel unobserved components model to estimate unemployment gaps disaggregated by age and gender. Recessions before COVID affected men's labor market outcomes more than women's; however, the reverse was true for the COVID recession, with effects amplified for younger workers. The aggregate Phillips curve flattens over time and hysteresis is countercyclical for all groups. We find heterogeneity in both the Phillips curve and hysteresis coefficients, with wages responding more to workers with an outside option (high school- and retirement-age) and larger effects of ...
Working Paper
A State-Level Analysis of Okun’s Law
Okun?s law is an empirical relationship that measures the correlation between the deviation of the unemployment rate from its natural rate and the deviation of output growth from its potential. In this paper, we estimate Okun?s coefficients for each U.S. state and examine the potential factors that explain the heterogeneity of the estimated Okun relationships. We find that indicators of more flexible labor markets (higher levels of education achievement in the population, lower rate of unionization, and a higher share of nonmanufacturing employment) are important determinants of the ...
Discussion Paper
Expectations and the Final Mile of Disinflation
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy experienced a swift recovery accompanied by a sharp rise in inflation. Inflation has been gradually declining since 2022 without a notable slowdown in the labor market. Nonetheless, inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target and the path of the so-called final mile remains uncertain, as emphasized by Chair Powell during his press conference in January. In this post, we examine the unemployment-inflation trade-off over the past few years through the lens of a New Keynesian Phillips curve, based on our recent ...
Journal Article
Estimating Natural Rates of Unemployment
Before the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate reached a historic low that was close to estimates of its underlying longer-run value and the short-run level associated with an absence of inflationary pressures. After two turbulent years, unemployment has returned to its pre-pandemic low, and the estimated underlying longer-run unemployment rate appears largely unchanged. However, economic disruptions appear to have pushed up the short-run noninflationary rate substantially, as high as 6%. Examining these different measures of the natural rate of unemployment can provide useful insights for ...