We explore a hypothesis about the take-off in inflation that occurred in the early 1970s. According to the expectations trap hypothesis, the Fed was pushed into producing the high inflation out of a fear of violating the public's inflation expectations. We compare this hypothesis with the Phillips curve hypothesis, according to which the Fed produced the high inflation as an unfortunate by-product of a conscious decision to jump-start a weak economy. Which hypothesis is more plausible has important implications for what needs to be done to prevent other inflation flare-ups.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7809.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 2000 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7809
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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.:
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[Downloadable!]
V. V. Chari & Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum, 1996.
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Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 1998.
"Modeling Money,"
NBER Working Papers
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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