IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/intfin/v29y2026i1p44-56.html

Measuring U.S. Core Inflation: The Stress Test of COVID‐19

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence Ball
  • Daniel Leigh
  • Prachi Mishra
  • Antonio Spilimbergo

Abstract

Large price changes in industries affected by the COVID‐19 crisis caused erratic fluctuations in the U.S. headline inflation rate. This paper compares alternative approaches to filtering out the transitory effects of these industry price changes and measuring the underlying or core level of inflation over 2020–2021, the height of the pandemic. The Federal Reserve's preferred measure of core, the inflation rate excluding food and energy prices, performed poorly over that period: it was almost as volatile as headline inflation. Measures of core that exclude a fixed set of additional industries, such as the Atlanta Fed's sticky‐price inflation rate, were less volatile, but the least volatile were measures that filter out large price changes in any industry, such as the Cleveland Fed's median inflation rate and the Dallas Fed's trimmed mean inflation rate. These core measures followed smooth paths, drifting down when the economy was weak in 2020 and then rising as the economy rebounded.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Ball & Daniel Leigh & Prachi Mishra & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2026. "Measuring U.S. Core Inflation: The Stress Test of COVID‐19," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 44-56, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:intfin:v:29:y:2026:i:1:p:44-56
    DOI: 10.1111/infi.70011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/infi.70011
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/infi.70011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Gago, Joana & Vale, Sofia, 2025. "Oil price swings and inflationary echoes: The impact of oil market shocks on consumer and producer prices in Europe and the U.S," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    3. Carlomagno, Guillermo & Fornero, Jorge & Sansone, Andrés, 2023. "A proposal for constructing and evaluating core inflation measures," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 4(3).
    4. Basu, Abhishek & Mazumder, Sandeep, 2024. "Motor fuel and core inflation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    5. Bonaparte, Yosef & Fabozzi, Frank J. & Peron, Matt, 2025. "Measuring transitory inflation: Implications for monetary policy and stock market volatility," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:intfin:v:29:y:2026:i:1:p:44-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1367-0271 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.