This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data


[ Papers | Articles | Software | Books | Chapters | Authors | Institutions | JEL Classification | NEP reports | Search | New papers by email | Author registration | Rankings | Volunteers | FAQ | Blog | Help! ]

Intrinsic and inherited inflation persistence

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics
Author Info
Jeff Fuhrer

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Abstract

In the now conventional view of the inflation process, the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) captures most of the persistence in inflation. The sources of persistence are twofold. First, the “driving process” for inflation—the output gap or, more commonly, real marginal cost—is itself quite persistent, and a casual inspection of the NKPC reveals that inflation must “inherit” this persistence. Second, a modest amount of backward-looking or indexing behavior imparts some “intrinsic” persistence to inflation. This latter source is generally thought to be of less importance than the former, as the degree of autocorrelation in the driving processes is substantial. This paper shows that in practice inflation in the NKPC inherits very little of the persistence of the driving process, and, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is intrinsic persistence that constitutes the dominant source of persistence. The paper explores the reasons for this and links them to two empirical observations. First, it has been difficult to develop a sizable coefficient on the driving process in NKPCs. Second, the shock that enters the NKPC, while often difficult to motivate economically, is large and is critical in distinguishing the sources of inflation persistence. While these observations help to clarify the behavior of inflation in NKPCs, they raise other fundamental questions about how to model inflation.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2005/wp058.htm
File Format: text/html
File Function:
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2005/wp058.pdf
File Format: application/pdf
File Function:
Download Restriction: no

Publisher Info
Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in its series Working Papers with number 05-8.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML, plain text, BibTeX, RIS (EndNote), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:05-8

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 600 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02210
Phone: 617-973-3397
Fax: 617-973-4221
Email:
Web page: http://www.bos.frb.org/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Email:

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Diane Rosenberger).

Related research
Keywords: Inflation (Finance)

Other versions of this item:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information Versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal To Replace The New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. John B. Taylor, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," NBER Reprints 0126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Other versions:
  3. Andrew Levin & Jeremy Piger, 2003. "Is Inflation Persistence Intrinsic in Industrial Economies?," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 298, Society for Computational Economics.
    Other versions:
  4. Sbordone, A.M., 1998. "Prices and Unit Labor Costs: a New Test of Price Stickiness," Papers 653, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.
    Other versions:
  5. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C, 1997. "The (Un)Importance of Forward-Looking Behavior in Price Specifications," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(3), pages 338-50, August.
    Other versions:
  6. Roberts, John M, 1995. "New Keynesian Economics and the Phillips Curve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 975-84, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Gerard O'Reilly & Karl Whelan, 2005. "Has Euro-Area Inflation Persistence Changed Over Time?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(4), pages 709-720, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. Peter N. Ireland, 2004. "Technology Shocks in the New Keynesian Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 923-936, 01. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  9. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "Inflation dynamics: A structural econometric analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 195-222, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  10. Jeremy Rudd & Karl Whelan, 2001. "New tests of the New-Keynesian Phillips Curve," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-30, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  11. Erceg, Christopher J. & Henderson, Dale W. & Levin, Andrew T., 2000. "Optimal monetary policy with staggered wage and price contracts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-313, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  12. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark & Lopez-Salido, J. David, 2001. "European inflation dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1237-1270. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  13. Timothy Cogley & Argia M. Sbordone, 2005. "A search for a structural Phillips curve," Staff Reports 203, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  14. Fuhrer, Jeff & Moore, George, 1995. "Inflation Persistence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(1), pages 127-59, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  15. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2004. "Estimating the Euler equation for output," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 1133-1153, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  16. Marvin Goodfriend & Robert G. King, 1998. "The new neoclassical synthesis and the role of monetary policy," Working Paper 98-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. [Downloadable!]
  17. Ball, Laurence & Gregory Mankiw, N. & Reis, Ricardo, 2005. "Monetary policy for inattentive economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 703-725, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  18. Gray, Jo Anna, 1978. "On Indexation and Contract Length," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(1), pages 1-18, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Fischer, Stanley, 1977. "Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 191-205, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles Evans, 2001. "Nominal rigidities and the dynamic effects of a shock to monetary policy," Working Paper 0107, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  22. Anderson, Gary & Moore, George, 1985. "A linear algebraic procedure for solving linear perfect foresight models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 247-252. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  23. Bai, Jushan, 1999. "Likelihood ratio tests for multiple structural changes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 299-323, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Ashoka Mody & Franziska Ohnsorge, 2007. "Can Domestic Policies Influence Inflation?," IMF Working Papers 07/257, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  2. Adam Hale Shapiro, 2006. "Estimating the New Keynesian Phillips Curve: a vertical production chain approach," Working Papers 06-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Chengsi Zhang & Denise R. Osborn & Dong Heon Kim, 2006. "The New Keynesian Phillips Curve: from Sticky Inflation to Sticky Prices," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 78, Economics, The Univeristy of Manchester. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Michael T. Kiley, 2006. "A quantitative comparison of sticky-price and sticky-information models of price setting," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2006-45, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Norman Swanson & Oleg Korenok & Stanislav Radchenko, 2006. "International Evidence on the Efficacy of new-Keynesian Models of Inflation Persistence," Departmental Working Papers 200617, Rutgers University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Roger Bjørnstad and Ragnar Nymoen, 2006. "Will it float? The New Keynesian Phillips curve tested on OECD panel data," Discussion Papers 463, Research Department of Statistics Norway. [Downloadable!]
  7. Efrem Castelnuovo, 2006. "Monetary Policy Switch, the Taylor Curve, and the Great Moderation," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 59, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
  8. Fabià Gumbau-Brisa, 2005. "Heterogeneous beliefs and inflation dynamics: a general equilibrium approach," Working Papers 05-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. [Downloadable!]
  9. Andreas Hornstein, 2007. "Evolving inflation dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Fall, pages 317-339. [Downloadable!]
Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? Over 77% of the top 1000 economists are registered on RePEc.

This page was last updated on 2008-7-7.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.