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Relative Goods' Prices, Pure Inflation, and the Phillips Correlation

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  • Ricardo Reis
  • Mark W. Watson

Abstract

This paper uses a dynamic factor model for the quarterly changes in consumption goods’ prices to separate them into three independent components: idiosyncratic relative-price changes, a low-dimensional index of aggregate relative-price changes, and an index of equiproportional changes in all inflation rates, that we label “pure” inflation. The paper estimates the model on U.S. data since 1959, and it presents a simple structural model that relates the three components of price changes to fundamental economic shocks. We use the estimates of the pure inflation and aggregate relative-price components to answer two questions. First, what share of the variability of inflation is associated with each component, and how are they related to conventional measures of monetary policy and relative-price shocks? We find that pure inflation accounts for 15-20% of the variability in inflation while our aggregate relative-price index accounts most of the rest. Conventional measures of relative prices are strongly but far from perfectly correlated with our relative-price index; pure inflation is only weakly correlated with money growth rates, but more strongly correlated with nominal interest rates. Second, what drives the Phillips correlation between inflation and measures of real activity? We find that the Phillips correlation essentially disappears once we control for goods’ relative-price changes. This supports modern theories of inflation dynamics based on price rigidities and many consumption goods.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13615.

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Date of creation: Nov 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13615

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  1. Michael F. Bryan & Stephen G. Cecchetti & Rodney L. Wiggins II, 1997. "Efficient Inflation Estimation," NBER Working Papers 6183, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2005. "Implications of Dynamic Factor Models for VAR Analysis," NBER Working Papers 11467, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles Evans, 2001. "Nominal rigidities and the dynamic effects of a shock to monetary policy," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jun.
  4. Watson, Mark W., 1989. "Recursive solution methods for dynamic linear rational expectations models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 65-89, May.
  5. Riccardo Cristadoro & Mario Forni & Lucrezia Reichlin & Giovanni Veronese, 2001. "A core inflation index for the euro area," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 435, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  6. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
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Cited by:
  1. Doz, Catherine & Giannone, Domenico & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2006. "A Quasi Maximum Likelihood Approach for Large Approximate Dynamic Factor Models," CEPR Discussion Papers 5724, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Michal Brzoza-Brzezina & Jacek Kotlowski, 2009. "Estimating pure inflation in the Polish economy," Working Papers 37, Department of Applied Econometrics, Warsaw School of Economics.

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