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Are Long-run Inflation Expectations Well Anchored?
Many observers anticipate that the recent run-up in inflation in the United States will prove to be temporary, and annual inflation will be near the Fed’s target of 2% in 2022 and 2023. An important consideration for policymakers, however, is whether the private sector will similarly read the rise in inflation as temporary. That is, are long-run inflation expectations likely to remain anchored, or might the sharp rise in inflation cause long-run expectations to increase substantially as well?
Discussion Paper
How Do Firms Adjust Prices in a High Inflation Environment?
How do firms set prices? What factors do they consider, and to what extent are cost increases passed through to prices? While these are important questions in general, they become even more salient during periods of high inflation. In this blog post, we highlight preliminary results from ongoing research on firms’ price-setting behavior, a joint project between researchers at the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Cleveland, and New York. We use a combination of open-ended interviews and a quantitative survey in our analysis. Firms reported that the strength of demand was the most important ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy and the Great COVID-19 Price Level Shock
We use an analytically tractable DSGE model to study the surge in the cost of living in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. A calibrated version of the model is used to assess the conduct of US monetary and fiscal policy over the 2020-2024 period. The model is also used to estimate the economic and welfare consequences of alternative monetary and fiscal policies. The calibrated model suggests that while the extraordinary fiscal transfers made in 2020-21 generally improved economic welfare, they were significantly larger than needed. These welfare gains came primarily in the form of insurance, ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy and the Great COVID-19 Price Level Shock
We employ a small-scale dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze the surge in inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic. A calibrated version of the model is used to assess U.S. monetary and fiscal policy over the 2020–2024 period and to estimate the economic and welfare consequences of alternative policy scenarios. The analysis suggests that the large fiscal transfers of 2020–2021 were broadly welfare-improving, albeit larger than necessary. Given the fiscal stance in place, optimal monetary policy would not have generated a materially different price level dynamic. While monetary ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy and the Great COVID-19 Price Level Shock
We use an analytically tractable DSGE model to study the surge in the cost of living in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. A calibrated version of the model is used to assess the conduct of US monetary and fiscal policy over the 2020-2024 period. The model is also used to estimate the economic and welfare consequences of alternative monetary and fiscal policies. The calibrated model suggests that while the extraordinary fiscal transfers made in 2020-21 generally improved economic welfare, they were significantly larger than needed. These welfare gains came primarily in the form of insurance, ...
Working Paper
Liquidity Premiums on Government Debt and the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model where agents use nominal government bonds as collateral in secured lending arrangements. If the collateral constraint binds, agents price in a liquidity premium on bonds that lowers the real rate on bonds. In equilibrium, the price level is determined according to the fiscal theory of the price level. However, the market value of government debt exceeds its fundamental value. We then examine the dynamic properties of the model and show that the market value of the government debt can fluctuate even though there are no changes to current or ...
Newsletter
Forecasting Inflation During the Pandemic: Who Got It Right?
The sudden rise in inflation that started in 2021 was the largest in 40 years for the United States. The rapidity, size, and persistence of this increase took most observers by surprise. In this article, we conduct a retrospective analysis and compare the accuracy of inflation projections made before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic by three groups of people: individual households, professional forecasters, and policymakers on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System.
Discussion Paper
Anatomy (not Autopsy) of the Phillips Curve
The relationship between inflation and real economic activity has long been central to debates in macroeconomics and monetary policy. At the core of this debate is the Phillips curve (PC), which measures how strongly inflation reacts to movements in economic conditions. The steepness of this curve matters enormously for monetary policy: if the PC is steeper, inflation rises faster during booms and falls faster in recessions, which entails central banks having to act more forcefully if they want to stabilize inflation around their target. Prior analysis found astonishingly small estimates of ...
Discussion Paper
Does the Phillips Curve Steepen When Costs Surge?
Inflation does not always respond to cost and demand pressures in the same way. When shocks are small, the mapping from costs to prices is roughly proportional—double the shock, double the inflation response. But when the economy is hit by large shocks, this proportionality breaks down. As the recent surge and subsequent decline of global inflation showed, price growth can accelerate—or decelerate—by more than one-for-one relative to the size of the disturbance. Economists refer to this pattern as nonlinear inflation dynamics. In this post, I discuss what these nonlinearities mean, how ...