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Working Paper
House prices, heterogeneous banks and unconventional monetary policy options
This paper develops a nancial mechanism which integrates housing and the real econ- omy through housing-secured debt. In this environment, movements in home prices are ampli ed through both borrowers and banks' balance sheets, leading to a self-reinforcing credit/liquidity crunch. When placed within a traditional business cycle model, this - financial structure quantitatively captures empirical relationships the traditional nancial accelerator mechanism struggles to explain and the qualitative predictions of the model are consistent with dynamic responses from a VAR. The model provides a ...
Journal Article
Gasoline Prices Unlikely to Bring Down Inflation in 2023
Gasoline prices can influence inflation both directly (by changing prices at the pump) and indirectly (by shaping consumers’ inflation expectations). Through these channels, gasoline prices have played an important role in the run-up and recent decline in inflation. Although gasoline prices have declined from their all-time highs, they are expected to remain relatively stable in 2023. As a result, gasoline prices are unlikely to deliver further reductions in either inflation or inflation expectations this year.
Journal Article
Evaluating a Year of Oil Price Volatility
Troy Davig, Nida ak?r Melek, Jun Nie, Lee Smith, and Didem Tzemen find changes in expectations of future oil supply relative to demand are the main drivers of the recent oil price decline.
Journal Article
How Does a Rise in International Shipping Costs Affect U.S. Inflation?
Trenton Herriford, Elizabeth M. Johnson, Nicholas Sly, and A. Lee Smith find that an increase in ocean shipping costs leads to a modest boost in core inflation after one year.
Working Paper
Did the Federal Reserve Break the Phillips Curve? Theory and Evidence of Anchoring Inflation Expectations
In a macroeconomic model with drifting long-run inflation expectations, the anchoring of inflation expectations manifests in two testable predictions. First, expectations about inflation far in the future should no longer respond to news about current inflation. Second, better-anchored inflation expectations weaken the relationship between unemployment and inflation, flattening the reduced-form Phillips curve. We evaluate both predictions and find that communication of a numerical inflation objective better anchored inflation expectations in the United States but failed to anchor expectations ...
Journal Article
A Tight Labor Market Could Keep Rent Inflation Elevated
Rent inflation responds more to labor market conditions compared with other components of inflation. We attribute this link between labor market tightness and rent inflation to greater demand for rental units afforded by job gains and wage growth. Although online measures of asking rents currently suggest official measures of rent inflation will decline, we caution that rent inflation is likely to remain above pre-pandemic levels so long as the labor market remains tight.
Journal Article
How much of the fall in inflation can be explained by energy and import prices?
A. Lee Smith finds that recent declines in inflation may be due to historically large movements in oil prices and the foreign exchange value of the dollar.
Working Paper
When does the cost channel pose a challenge to inflation targeting central banks?
In a sticky-price model where firms finance their production inputs, there is both a lower and an upper bound on the central bank's inflation response necessary to rule out the possibility of self-fulfilling inflation expectations. This paper shows that real wage rigidities decrease this upper bound, but coefficients in the range of those on the Taylor rule place the economy well within the determinacy region. However, when there is time-variation in the share of firms who finance their inputs (i.e. Markov-Switching) then inflation targeting interest rate rules are often found to result in ...
Journal Article
Policymakers Have Options for Additional Accommodation: Forward Guidance and Yield Curve Control
With the federal funds rate near zero, policymakers are evaluating options for providing additional monetary policy accommodation, including a tool known as yield curve control. We find that despite low nominal Treasury yields, some scope for additional accommodation remains should policymakers deem it appropriate. However, we argue that forward guidance about future interest rates could deliver much, though not all, of the accommodation of yield curve control.