Measuring Inflation Expectations Uncertainty Using High‐Frequency Data

Inflation expectations play a key role in determining future economic outcomes. The associated uncertainty provides a direct gauge of how well‐anchored the inflation expectations are. We construct a model‐based measure of inflation expectations uncertainty by augmenting a standard unobserved components model of inflation with information from noisy and possibly biased measures of inflation expectations obtained from financial markets. This new model‐based measure of inflation expectations uncertainty is more accurately estimated and can provide valuable information for policymakers. Using U.S. data, we find significant changes in inflation expectations uncertainty during the Great Recession.     

Measuring Inflation Anchoring and Uncertainty: A U.S. and Euro Area Comparison

We use several U.S. and euro‐area surveys of professional forecasters to estimate a dynamic factor model of inflation featuring time‐varying uncertainty. We obtain survey‐consistent distributions of future inflation at any horizon, both in the U.S. and the euro area. Equipped with this model, we propose a novel measure of the anchoring of inflation expectations that accounts for inflation uncertainty. Our results suggest that following the Great Recession, inflation anchoring improved in the United States, while mild de‐anchoring occurred in the euro area. As of our sample end, both areas appear to be almost equally anchored.     

Survey Measures of Expected Inflation and the Inflation Process

The accuracy of inflation forecasts obtained from household and professional surveys has deteriorated noticeably of late, to the extent that a simple autoregressive specification outperforms survey forecasts. The decline in (absolute and relative) accuracy has taken place at about the same time as an apparent change in the inflation process. Projections of household forecasts on realized inflation suggests that households have not recognized this change. For the professionals, projections of expected inflation on headline inflation have changed, but on core inflation have not. By contrast, projections of realized headline inflation on core have changed sharply.     

Comparing New Keynesian models of the business cycle: A Bayesian approach

The baseline New Keynesian model cannot replicate the observed persistence in inflation, output, and real wages for sensible parameter values. As a result, several extensions have been suggested to improve its fit to the data. We use a Bayesian approach to estimate and compare the baseline sticky price model of Calvo's [1983. Staggered prices in a utility maximizing framework. Journal of Monetary Economics 12, 383-398.] and three extensions. Our empirical results are as follows. First, we find that adding price indexation improves the fit of Calvo's [1983. Staggered prices in a utility maximizing framework. Journal of Monetary Economics 12, 383-398.] model. Second, models with both staggered price and wage setting dominate models with only price rigidities. Third, introducing wage indexation does not significantly improve the fit. Fourth, all model estimates suggest a high degree of price stickiness. Fifth, the estimates of labor supply elasticity are higher in models with both staggered price and wage contracts. Finally, the estimated inflation parameters of the Taylor rule are stable across models.     

Do Inflation Expectations Propagate the Inflationary Impact of Real Oil Price Shocks?: Evidence from the Michigan Survey

This paper presents evidence that inflation expectations, as measured by the Michigan Survey of Consumers, only play a minimal role in the propagation of real oil price shocks into inflation. This is despite evidence that confirms that inflation expectations are sensitive to real oil price shocks. Further analysis suggests that after the 1990s, inflation expectations may have played no part in propagating real oil price shocks into inflation.     

Trend Inflation and the Nature of Structural Breaks in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve

We show that with a unit root in inflation, the new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) implies an unobserved components model with a stochastic trend component and an inflation gap. Our empirical results suggest that with an increase in trend inflation during the Great Inflation, the response of inflation to real economic activity decreases and the persistence of the inflation gap increases due to an increase in the persistence of the unobserved stationary component. These results are in line with the predictions of Cogley and Sbordone ( 2008 ), who show that the coefficients of the NKPC are functions of time‐varying trend inflation.     

Estimating Trend Inflation Based on Unobserved Components Model: Is It Correlated with the Inflation Gap?

Building on the work of Stock and Watson (2007), this paper empirically shows that a negative correlation between innovations to trend inflation and the inflation gap plays an important role in the dynamics of postwar U.S. inflation. Additional features that we incorporate in our model include regime‐switching inflation gap persistence and association between inflation and inflation uncertainty. The resulting estimate of trend inflation is smooth, and our model provides superior out‐of‐sample forecasts than Stock and Watson's (2007) unobserved components model with stochastic volatility or than Atkeson and Ohanian's (2001) random walk model does.     

Convergence of Euro area inflation rates

We study the behavior of inflation rates among the 12 initial Euro countries in order to test whether and when the group convergence initially dictated by the Maastricht treaty and now by the ECB, occurs. We also assess the impact of events such as the advent of the Euro and the 2008 financial crisis. Due to the small size of the estimation sample, we propose a new procedure that increases the power of panel unit root tests when used to study group-wise convergence. Applying this new procedure to Euro area inflation, we find strong and lasting evidence of convergence among the inflation rates soon after the implementation of the Maastricht treaty and a dramatic decrease in the persistence of the differential after the occurrence of the single currency. After the 2008 crisis, Euro area inflation rates follow the ECB's price stability benchmark, although Greece reports relatively higher inflation.     

What Makes the Output–Inflation Trade‐Off Change? The Absence of Accelerating Deflation in Japan

It is standard to model the output–inflation trade-off as a linear relationship with a time-invariant slope. We assess empirical evidence for two sets of theories that allow for endogenous variation in the slope of the short-run Phillips curve. At an empirical level, we examine why large negative output gaps in Japan in the late 1990s did not lead to accelerating deflation but instead coincided with stable, albeit moderately negative inflation. Our results suggest that this episode is most convincingly interpreted as reflecting a gradual flattening of the Phillips curve. We find that this flattening is best explained by models with endogenous price durations. These models imply that in any economy where trend inflation is substantially lower (or substantially higher) today than in past decades, time variation in the slope of the Phillips curve has become too important to ignore.     

Similarities and convergence in G-7 cycles

This paper examines the properties of G-7 cycles using a multicountry Bayesian panel VAR model with time variations, unit specific dynamics and cross-country interdependences. We demonstrate the presence of a significant world cycle and show that country specific indicators play a much smaller role. We detect differences across business cycle phases but, apart from an increase in synchronicity in the late 1990s, find little evidence of major structural changes. We also find no evidence of the existence of a Euro specific cycle or of its emergence in the late 1990s.     

News on Inflation and the Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations

This paper examines the nexus between news coverage on inflation and households’ inflation expectations. In doing so, we test the epidemiological foundations of the sticky information model (Carroll 2003, 2006 ). We use both aggregate and household‐level data from the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. We highlight a fundamental disconnection among news on inflation, consumers’ frequency of expectation updating, and the accuracy of their expectations. Our evidence provides at best weak support to the epidemiological framework, as most of the consumers who update their expectations do not revise them toward professional forecasters’ mean forecast.     

Does Inflation Adjust Faster to Aggregate Technology Shocks than to Monetary Policy Shocks?

This paper studies U.S. inflation adjustment speed to aggregate technology shocks and to monetary policy shocks in a medium size Bayesian vector autoregression model. According to the model estimated on the 1959–2007 sample, inflation adjusts much faster to aggregate technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks. These results are robust to different identification assumptions and measures of aggregate prices. However, by separately estimating the model over the pre‐ and post‐1980 periods, this paper further shows that inflation adjusts much faster to technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks in the post‐1980 period, but not in the pre‐1980 period.     

Steady-state equilibrium with state-dependent pricing

State-dependent pricing models are now an operational framework for quantitative business cycle analysis. The analysis in Ball and Romer [1991. Sticky prices as coordination failure. American Economic Review 81 (3), 539-552], however, suggests that such models may be rife with multiple equilibria, for in their static model, price adjustment is always characterized by complementarity, a necessary condition for multiplicity. We study existence and uniqueness of steady-state equilibrium in a discrete-time state-dependent pricing model. We find only weak complementarity and no evidence of multiplicity. However, nonexistence of symmetric steady-state equilibrium with pure strategies arises in the region of the parameter space between flexible and sticky prices.     

Estimation of the equilibrium exchange rate: The CHEER approach

The paper presents the results of an investigation where the concept of a steady-state level of the exchange rate is equated with the capital market equilibrium based on the CHEER approach. The empirical analysis concentrates on Poland, because in this case the assessment of the equilibrium exchange rate is of vital importance. The prospect of the Polish currency joining the ERM2 provokes controversies and requires research into the economic consequences of accession to the EMU. The international transmission mechanisms affecting the Polish economy are identified within the VEqCM framework. The calculations indicate that in the last years of the analyzed sample (i.e. up to December 2006) the zloty/euro exchange rate was slightly overvalued, and the steady-state level was found to have been adjusting to the value of 4.1 zlotys.     

Regionality revisited: An examination of the direction of spread of currency crises

What determines the direction of spread of currency crises? We examine data on waves of currency crises in 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1998 to evaluate several hypotheses on the determinants of contagion. We simultaneously consider trade competition, financial links, and institutional similarity to the “ground zero” country as potential drivers of contagion. To overcome data limitations and account for model uncertainty, we utilize Bayesian methodologies hitherto unused in the empirical literature on contagion. In particular, we use the Bayesian averaging of binary models that allows us to take into account the uncertainty regarding the appropriate set of regressors.We find that institutional similarity to the ground zero country plays an important role in determining the direction of contagion in all the emerging market currency crises in our dataset. We thus provide persuasive evidence in favour of the “wake-up call” hypothesis for financial contagion. Trade and financial links may also play a role in determining the direction of contagion, but their importance varies amongst the crisis periods.