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.     

Inflation Dynamics When Inflation Is Near Zero

We discuss the likely evolution of U.S. inflation in the near and medium terms on the basis of (i) past U.S. experience with very low levels of inflation, (ii) the most recent Japanese experience with negative inflation, and (iii) some preliminary U.S. micro evidence on downward nominal wage rigidity. Our findings question the view that stable long‐run inflation expectations and downward nominal wage rigidity will necessarily provide sufficient support to prices to avoid further declines in inflation. We show that an inflation model fitted on Japanese data over the past 20 years, which accounts for both short‐ and long‐run inflation expectations, matches the recent U.S. inflation experience quite well. While the model indicates that U.S. inflation might be subject to a lower bound, it does not rule out a prolonged period of low inflation or even mild deflation going forward. In addition, micro‐level data on wages suggest no obvious downward rigidity in the firm's wage bill, downward rigidity in individual wages notwithstanding. As a consequence, downward nominal wage rigidity may not be enough to offset deflationary pressures in the current situation.     

Inflation Expectations and Risk Premiums in an Arbitrage‐Free Model of Nominal and Real Bond Yields

Differences between yields on comparable‐maturity U.S. Treasury nominal and real debt, the so‐called breakeven inflation (BEI) rates, are widely used indicators of inflation expectations. However, better measures of inflation expectations could be obtained by subtracting inflation risk premiums (IRP) from the BEI rates. We provide such decompositions using an affine arbitrage‐free model of the term structure that captures the pricing of both nominal and real Treasury securities. Our empirical results suggest that long‐term inflation expectations have been well anchored over the past few years, and IRP, although volatile, have been close to zero on average.     

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.     

Effective Use of Survey Information in Estimating the Evolution of Expected Inflation

The evolution of the term structure of expected U.S. inflation is modeled using survey data to provide timely information on structural change not contained in lagged inflation data. To capture shifts in subjective perceptions, the model is adaptive to long‐horizon survey expectations. However, even short‐horizon survey expectations inform shifting‐endpoint estimates that capture the lag between inflation and the perceived inflation target, which anchors inflation expectations. Results show movements of the perceived target are an important source of inflation persistence and suggest historical U.S. monetary policy was not fully credible for much of the postwar sample.     

Nowcasting U.S. Headline and Core Inflation

Forecasting future inflation and nowcasting contemporaneous inflation are difficult. We propose a new and parsimonious model for nowcasting headline and core inflation in the U.S. consumer price index and price index for personal consumption expenditures that relies on relatively few variables. The model's nowcasting accuracy improves as information accumulates over a month or quarter, outperforming statistical benchmarks. In real‐time comparisons, the model's headline inflation nowcasts substantially outperform those from the Blue Chip consensus and the Survey of Professional Forecasters. Across all four inflation measures, the model's nowcasting accuracy is comparable to that of the Federal Reserve Board's Greenbook.     

A Phillips Curve with Anchored Expectations and Short‐Term Unemployment

This paper examines the behavior of U.S. core inflation, as measured by the weighted median of industry price changes. We find that core inflation since 1985 is well‐explained by an expectations‐augmented Phillips curve in which expected inflation is measured with professional forecasts and labor‐market slack is captured by the short‐term unemployment rate. We also find that expected inflation was backward‐looking until the late 1990s, but then became strongly anchored at the Federal Reserve's target. This shift in expectations changed the relationship between inflation and unemployment from an accelerationist Phillips curve to a level‐level Phillips curve. Our specification explains why high unemployment during the Great Recession did not reduce inflation greatly: partly because inflation expectations were anchored, and partly because short‐term unemployment rose less sharply than total unemployment.     

An Inflation‐Predicting Measure of the Output Gap in the Euro Area

Using a small Bayesian dynamic factor model of the euro area, we estimate the deviations of output from its trend that are consistent with the behavior of inflation. We label these deviations the output gap. In order to pin down the features of the model, we evaluate the accuracy of real‐time inflation forecasts from different model specifications. The version that forecasts inflation best implies that after the 2011 sovereign debt crisis, the output gap in the euro area has been much larger than the official estimates. Versions featuring a secular stagnation‐like slowdown in trend growth, and hence a small output gap after 2011, do not adequately capture the inflation developments.     

世界主要经济体通货膨胀预期的异质性研究

本文构建了中国、日本、美国和欧元区通货膨胀预期不确定性的GARCH度量模型,并利用广义脉冲响应函数、格兰杰因果关系检验和TFGARCH模型信息反映曲线等实证技术分析了1983年1月至2010年7月世界主要经济体通货膨胀及其预期不确定性之间的关系.研究发现:世界主要经济体通货膨胀及其预期不确定性关系的差距取决于各国中央银行的独立性,相对于其他经济体,对通货膨胀的控制比追求经济增长更重要,中国的货币政策应及早实施通货膨胀目标制.     

A New Time‐Varying Parameter Autoregressive Model for U.S. Inflation Expectations

We study the evolution of U.S. inflation by means of a new noncausal autoregressive model with time‐varying parameters that outperforms the corresponding causal and constant‐parameter noncausal models in terms of fit and forecast accuracy. Our model also beats the unobserved component stochastic volatility (UCSV) model, one of the best‐performing univariate inflation forecasting models, in terms of both point and density forecasts. We also show how the new Keynesian Phillips curve can be estimated based on our noncausal model. Both expected and lagged inflation turn out important, but the former dominates in determining the current inflation.     

Does Money Matter in Shaping Domestic Business Cycles? An International Investigation

We study the contribution of money to business‐cycle fluctuations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the euro area using a small‐scale structural monetary business cycle model. Constrained likelihood‐based estimates of the parameters are provided and time instabilities analyzed. Real balances are statistically important for output and inflation fluctuations. Their contribution changes over time. Models giving money no role provide a distorted representation of the sources of cyclical fluctuations, of the transmission of shocks, and of the events of the last 40 years.     

Inflation and Welfare in Long‐Run Equilibrium with Firm Dynamics

We analyze the welfare cost of inflation in a model with a cash‐in‐advance constraint and an endogenous distribution of establishments' productivities. Inflation distorts aggregate productivity through firm entry dynamics. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy and the long‐run equilibrium properties are compared at low and high inflation. When the period over which the cash‐in‐advance constraint is binding is one quarter, an annual inflation rate of 10% leads to a decrease in average productivity of roughly 0.5% compared to the optimum. This decrease is not innocuous: it leads to a doubling of the welfare cost of inflation.     

Sectoral Money Demand and the Great Disinflation in the United States

Estimates of the welfare costs of inflation based on Bailey (1956) are typically computed using aggregate money demand models. Yet, the behavior of money demand may vary across sectors. Thus, the impact on welfare of inflation regime shifts may differ between households and firms. We specifically investigate the sectoral welfare implications of the shift from the Great Inflation to the present regime of low and stable inflation. For this purpose, we estimate different functional specifications of money demand for U.S. households and nonfinancial firms using flow‐of‐fund data covering four decades. We find that the benefits were significant for both sectors.     

Out of Bounds: Do SPF Respondents Have Anchored Inflation Expectations?

Since the Federal Open Market Committee announced a 2% inflation target in 2012, the median long-run inflation forecast of professional forecasters has been near target. We show, however, that most individual forecasters' long-run inflation expectations fluctuate substantially, with sizeable departures from target. We propose a new “bounds anchoring” indicator based on deviations of individuals' long-run forecasts from target. This indicator sheds new light on gradual changes in expectations since the 2012 announcement. We find that bounds anchoring gradually strengthened in the years following the target announcement, but that this trend has recently started to reverse.     

Reconsidering the Relationship between Inflation and Relative Price Variability

It has long been popularly believed that the relationship between inflation and relative price variability (RPV) is positive and stable. Using disaggregated CPI data for the United States and Japan, however, this study finds that the relationship is neither linear nor stable over time. The overall relationship is approximately U‐shaped around a nonzero threshold inflation rate. RPV therefore changes not with the inflation rate per se, but with the deviation of inflation from the threshold inflation rate. More importantly, the relationship is by no means stable over time but instead varies significantly in a way that coincides with regime changes of inflation or monetary policy. The relationship was positive during the period of high inflation of the 1970s and the early 1980s, as has been documented by a number of previous studies, whereas it takes a U‐shape profile during the Great Moderation. The results are robust to the use of core inflation, which excludes the traditionally volatile prices of food and energy. This paper then presents a modified version of the Calvo‐type sticky price model to describe the observed empirical regularities. Simulation experiments show that the modified Calvo model fits the data well, and that the underlying relationship hinges upon the degree of price rigidity, which is systematically related to inflation regime. For countries and periods with low inflation rates, the relationship takes a U‐shape as price adjustment is more sticky. In a high‐inflation environment, when price setting becomes more flexible, the U‐shaped profile vanishes.     

A New Model of Inflation,Trend Inflation,and Long‐Run Inflation Expectations

This paper develops a bivariate model of inflation and a survey‐based long‐run forecast of inflation that allows for the estimation of the link between trend inflation and the long‐run forecast. Thus, our model allows for the possibilities that long‐run forecasts taken from surveys can be equated with trend inflation, that the two are completely unrelated, or anything in between. Using a variety of inflation measures and survey‐based forecasts for several countries, we find that long‐run forecasts can provide substantial help in refining estimates and fitting and forecasting inflation. It is less helpful to simply equate trend inflation with the long‐run forecasts.     

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.     

On the Asymmetric U‐Shaped Relationship between Inflation,Inflation Uncertainty,and Relative Price Skewness in the UK

We investigate the asymmetric relationships between aggregate inflation and the second and third moments of the cross‐sectional distribution of relative prices using a modified Calvo pricing model with regime‐dependent price rigidities. Calibration experiments reveal that the inflation‐standard deviation and inflation‐skewness relationships exhibit U‐shaped asymmetries around the historical mean inflation rate. UK sectoral data support our results. We conclude that monetary policy should target an inflation rate proximate to the (common) minima of these nonlinear relationships and that core inflation measures should not be used for policy purposes as they exclude much of the information contained in the higher moments.     

Interwar Inflation,Unexpected Inflation,and Output Growth

Interwar macroeconomic history is a natural place to look for evidence on the correlation between output growth and inflation or unexpected inflation. We apply time‐series methods to measure unexpected inflation for more than 20 countries using both retail and wholesale prices. There is a significant, positive correlation between output growth and inflation for the entire period. There is little evidence that this correlation is caused by an underlying role for unexpected inflation. For wholesale price inflation in particular, the output declines associated with deflations were larger than the output increases associated with inflations of the same scale.     

FOMC Forecasts as a Focal Point for Private Expectations

We explore empirically the theoretical prediction that public information acts as a focal point in the context of the U.S. monetary policy. We aim at establishing whether the publication of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) inflation forecasts affects the cross‐sectional dispersion of private inflation expectations. Our main finding is that publishing FOMC inflation forecasts has a negative effect on the cross‐sectional dispersion of private current‐year inflation forecasts. This effect is found to be robust to another survey data set and to various macroeconomic controls. Moreover, we find that the dispersion of private inflation forecasts is not affected by the dispersion of views among FOMC members.