Evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve: evidence from the Euro Area and United States

Empirical relevance of inflation expectations in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) is highly controversial in the macroeconomics literature. With this in mind, this article evaluates the purely forward-looking NKPC useful for policy analysis with respect to their abilities to account for the dynamic relationship between output and inflation. Our findings show that the NKPC heavily relying on firms’ forward-looking behaviour is hardly supported by the Euro Area and the US data. The failure of the NKPC in matching the data is consistently observed across the sub-samples divided before and after the early 1980s. For comparison, we also investigate the performance of the hybrid NKPC and the traditional backward-looking Phillips curve associated with ad hoc price indexation assumptions.     

A simple test of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve

We propose a way to test the New Keynesian Phillips Curve without having to estimate its structural parameters. We find that it does not exist as a combination of the structural parameters consistent with the US data. This might be due to the failure of the joint hypothesis of rational expectations.     

The new Keynesian Phillips curve: endogeneity and misspecification

The wrong or insignificant sign of the forcing variable in the new Keynesian Phillips curve estimations may be a result of the endogeneity of the labour share and misspecification of real marginal cost in the baseline model. We address the misspecification of real marginal cost by formulating a broad measure that features the labour share, output gap and supply shock variables. The endogeneity of the labour share is addressed by using an appropriate lag of the labour share in the Phillips curve. Reduced-form evidence from five developed and five emerging market economies support the empirical validity of the NKPC.     

Output,Inflation and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve

Explicit modelling of factor markets clarifies two fundamental aspects of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC). First, we clarify the relationship between output and marginal cost. Second, for the NKPC in inflation–output space, we identify the key stochastic influences on inflation without recourse to ad hoc cost or excess demand shocks. The econometric implementation of this clarified NKPC, which evolves strictly according news on the stream of future marginal costs, allows us jointly to derive inflation as a forecast of future variables. Our approach clarifies the empirical successes and failures of the NKPC and allows us to provide new aggregate evidence on the degree of price rigidity in the UK economy.     

Macro frictions and theoretical identification of the New Keynesian Phillips curve

I discuss theoretical identification of the New Keynesian Phillips curve, and show that it can be identified with limited information techniques when the data generating process is a New Keynesian model with enough macro frictions or persistent shocks. Monte Carlo experiments illustrate the quantitative relevance of the results.     

The long-run Phillips curve and non-stationary inflation

Modern theories of inflation incorporate a vertical long-run Phillips curve and are usually estimated using techniques that ignore the non-stationary behaviour of inflation. Consequently, the estimates obtained are imprecise and unable to test the veracity of a vertical long-run Phillips curve. We estimate a Phillips curve model taking into account the non-stationary properties in inflation and identify a small but significant positive relationship between inflation and unemployment. The results also provide some evidence that the trade-off between inflation and the rate of unemployment in the short-run worsens as the mean rate of inflation increases.     

Anchoring of inflation expectations in the euro area: Recent evidence based on survey data

This article analyses the anchoring of inflation expectations of professional forecasters and consumers in the euro area. We study anchoring, defined as the central bank's ability to manage expectations, by paying special attention to the impact of the ECB inflation target and ECB inflation projections on inflation expectations. Our analysis indicates that in the post-crisis period longer-term inflation expectations have become somewhat more sensitive to shorter-term ones and to actual HICP inflation. We also find that the ECB inflation projections have recently become more important for short- and medium-term expectations of professional forecasters and at the same time the role of the ECB inflation target for those expectations has diminished. Overall, our analysis suggests that in recent years inflation expectations in the euro area have shown some signs of de-anchoring.     

Inflation literacy and inflation expectations: Evidence from Austrian household survey data

Inflation expectations are known to be quite heterogeneous across agents. We investigate whether this heterogeneity is primarily due to differences in people’s understanding of the inflation process and of the goals and intentions of the central bank. Using micro data from a survey conducted among 2000 Austrian households, we construct an indicator of “inflation literacy” from several questions on people’s knowledge about different aspects of inflation. We find that this indicator helps explain both the level and the uncertainty of inflation expectations: Households with relatively higher levels of inflation literacy tend to have lower and more accurate short-term and long-term inflation expectations. Interestingly, however, they are less certain about their inflation expectations than people with lower levels of inflation literacy. We also find that people’s trust in the central bank and in its ability to maintain price stability significantly dampens their inflation expectations.     

Phillips curve in US: New insights in time and frequency

The paper explores the co-movement between unemployment and inflation rates in US by using a battery of wavelet tools. The dataset covers the period 1945Q1–2017Q4, having quarterly frequency.The main findings reveal a not stable Phillips curve in US, depending on economic context, seasonality and time-persistence. The Phillips curve is not validated during economic turbulences, while it works over expansion economic periods. Even so, the trade-off between unemployment and inflation is unstable under seasonal growth components and time-persistence, running from short- to medium-term. No link between unemployment and inflation is found in the long-term.     

A Phillips curve interpretation of error-correction models of the wage and price dynamics

This paper presents a model of employment, distribution andinflation in which a modern error correction specification ofthe nominal wage and price dynamics (referring to claims onincome by workers and firms) occupies a prominent role. It isbrought out, explicitly, how this rather typical error-correctionsetting, which actually seems to capture the wage and pricedynamics of many large-scale econometric models quite well,is fully compatible with the notion of an old-fashioned Phillipscurve with finite slope. It is shown how the steady-state impactof various shocks to the model can be profitably conceived ofand interpreted in terms of (and to some extent even calculatedby means of) this long-run Phillips curve.     

The shape of the Phillips curve: the case of Indonesia

It is recognized that the effectiveness of monetary policy in the control of inflation depends critically on the relationship between inflation and the output gap. During booms, inflation is highly sensitive to monetary influences, but during recessions this influence is considerably muted. However, econometric investigation of this phenomenon has mostly focussed on the developed economies. In this article, the shape of the Phillips curve is investigated for Indonesia. Evidence is found of significant nonlinearities in the inflation–output relationship for Indonesia and it is argued that this relationship is best modelled by the capacity-constraint (L-shape) model.     

Flattening of the New Keynesian Phillips curve: Evidence for an emerging,small open economy

The flattening of the Phillips curve is a vigorously investigated phenomenon in many advanced economies. Still little evidence has been presented for emerging, small open economies facing persistently low inflation. In this paper I address this issue through rigorous estimation of a substantial number of stylized, open-economy hybrid new Keynesian Phillips curves for Poland. I find robust evidence of the flattening of the Phillips curve and the rising impact of external factors for both headline and core inflation. I conclude that during excessive disinflation in Poland the flattening of the Phillips curve can be partly explained by the underutilization of labour, whereas the stronger impact of global factors on core inflation suggests strengthening indirect effects. The changes in the estimated parameters indicate that the macroeconomic cost of bringing inflation back to the desired target has increased. Further identification of the reasons behind the flattening of the Phillips curve in an emerging, small open economy should provide useful insights for monetary policy.     

Product market regulation,trend inflation and inflation dynamics in the new Keynesian Phillips curve

In this empirical paper, we take a close look at the impact of the observed decline in the product market regulation, and hence in the barriers to entry and in impediments to competition, on inflation dynamics since the early 1980s.We use an enlarged new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) allowing for entry of firms and increasing competitive pressures with the number of firms and non zero trend inflation.Using OECD indicators on product market regulations, characterized by persistent fluctuations, and taking into account the non stationary properties of the inflation process, we investigate the empirical relevance of this NKPC for inflation dynamics in the US and France, assuming VAR expectations. The results point out that product market regulation is a good candidate as an exogenous structural source of the observed persistence in inflation for the past thirty years in both the US and France.     

Forecasting Inflation with the Hybrid New Keynesian Phillips Curve: A Compact-Scale Global VAR Approach*

ABSTRACT

In this article, the multihorizon predictive power of the Hybrid New Keynesian Phillips Curve (HNKPC) is analysed by making use of several close- and open-economy specifications for the headline inflation of six developed countries. The key element is the use of direct measures of inflation expectations – Consensus Forecast – embedded in a compact-scale Global VAR (GVAR) environment, becoming the baseline open-economy HNKPC (OE-HNKPC) specification. These OE-HNKPC point forecasts are evaluated using the Root Mean Squared Forecast Error (RMSFE) statistic and statistically compared with several benchmarks, including traditional atheoretical models. Several OE-HNKPC as well as a closed-economy HNKPC (CE-HNKPC) specifications are also analysed. The results indicate that in four out of six countries, the CE-HNKPC is the best forecasting model, whereas for the same countries, a parsimonious OE-HNKPC is the second-best alternative, and in most cases, outperforming traditional statistical benchmarks. The RMSFE is obviously affected by the unanticipated effects of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), spoiling out the performance of a number of competing forecasts. However, when considering an evaluation sample just before the crisis, both the CE-HNKPC and the parsimonious OE-HNKPC still come out as the best forecasting models. Furthermore, these preferred models also do an excellent job tracking inflation better than the best atheoretical models during the GFC.     

政策可信性变动对菲利普斯曲线稳定性的影响——来自中国的经验证据

文章以1994年前后的价格冲击下人民银行将适应性政策转变为非适应性政策这一事件为背景,考察了公众对政策可信性的变动及其对通胀预期形成方式和菲利普斯曲线稳定性的影响。我们首先在理性预期假定下设定引入政策可信性变量的菲利普斯曲线模型。通过对"产出-物价"曲线的判断,SVAR模型中通胀冲击下通胀和产出缺口的响应函数以及菲利普斯曲线模型的递归最小二乘法检验,得出我国公众对政策的可信性增加,进而导致其通胀预期形成方式中的前向参照政策信息的成分增加,菲利普斯曲线发生改变。这就意味着,如果人民银行试图维持通胀预期形成方式和菲利普斯曲线的稳定,就应该保证政策可信性具有稳定性,而且,从长期实现价格稳定目标的角度来看,人民银行还应不断提高这一政策的可信性。     

Inflation forecasting using the New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a time-varying trend

Does theory aid inflation forecasting? To address this question, we develop a novel forecasting procedure based upon a New Keynesian Phillips Curve that incorporates time-varying trend inflation, to capture shifts in central bank preferences and monetary policy frameworks. We generate theory-implied predictions for both the trend and cyclical components of inflation, and recombine them to obtain an overall inflation forecast. Using quarterly data for the Euro Area and the United States that cover almost half a century, we compare our inflation forecasting procedure against the most popular time series models. We find that our theory-based forecasts outperform these benchmarks that previous studies found difficult to beat. Our results are shown to be robust to structural breaks, geographic areas, and variants of the econometric specification. Our findings suggest that the scepticism concerning the use of theory in forecasting is unwarranted, and theory should continue to play an important role in policymaking.     

Thought experimentation and the Phillips curve

This paper offers the rationale for presenting a particular type of Phillips curve and develops the dynamic behavior of an economy where such a Phillips curve relation is observed. The specific kind of relation that is explored has similarities with the sticky-information Phillips curve of the Mankiw-Reis framework. Nevertheless, it adds an important dimension: firms need to form expectations about current events on past time periods not because of infrequent optimal updating of information but because producers want to evaluate the possibility of taking advantage of information deficiencies on the consumers’ side. A positive probability of ‘fooling’ consumers with a price above the one imposed by market conditions re-shapes the dynamic relation between the inflation rate and the output gap.     

The information content of market-based measures for the long-term inflation expectations of professionals: evidence from a midas analysis

Long-term inflation expectations taken from the Survey of Professional Forecasters are a major source of information for monetary policy. Unfortunately, they are published only on a quarterly basis. This article investigates the daily information content of market-based measures, such as inflation-linked swaps and breakeven inflation rates, for the next survey outcome. Using a mixed data sampling approach, we find that professionals account for the daily dynamics of market-based measures when they submit their long-term inflation expectations. We propose a daily indicator of professionals’ inflation expectations that outperforms alternative indicators that ignore the high-frequency dynamics of market-based measures. To illustrate the usefulness of the new indicator, we provide new evidence on the (re-)anchoring of U.S. inflation expectations.     

Inflation expectations of Brazilian consumers: an analysis based on the FGV survey

ABSTRACT

An accurate assessment of inflation expectations is crucial for the management of monetary policies. However, expectations are not directly observed and are hence normally inferred either from the interest rate structure or from surveys of professional forecasters. Alternatively, a direct measure may be obtained from consumer surveys. The aim of this paper is to study the formation of inflation expectations in Brazil, using a novel dataset based on the FGV/IBRE consumer survey. Basing our model on the rational inattention hypothesis, we find that individual heterogeneity plays a very significant role in shaping individual expectations; also, Brazilians adjust expectations to current inflation and to a fixed reference value, while professional forecasts do not play a very relevant role.