IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedkpr/y2010p173-220.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modeling inflation after the crisis

Author

Listed:
  • James H. Stock
  • Mark W. Watson

Abstract

In the United States, the rate of price inflation falls in recessions. Turning this observation into a useful inflation forecasting equation is difficult because of multiple sources of time variation in the inflation process, including changes in Fed policy and credibility. We propose a tightly parameterized model in which the deviation of inflation from a stochastic trend (which we interpret as long-term expected inflation) reacts stably to a new gap measure, which we call the unemployment recession gap. The short-term response of inflation to an increase in this gap is stable, but the long-term response depends on the resilience, or anchoring, of trend inflation. Dynamic simulations (given the path of unemployment) match the paths of inflation during post-1960 downturns, including the current one.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Modeling inflation after the crisis," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 173-220.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedkpr:y:2010:p:173-220
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/sympos/2010/Stock-Watson_final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter J. Klenow & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2008. "State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does it Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 863-904.
    2. John M. Roberts, 2006. "Monetary Policy and Inflation Dynamics," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(3), September.
    3. Laurence M. Ball, 2009. "Hysteresis in Unemployment: Old and New Evidence," NBER Working Papers 14818, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Michelle L. Barnes & Giovanni P. Olivei, 2003. "Inside and outside bounds: threshold estimates of the Phillips curve," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, pages 3-18.
    5. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert & Wei, Min, 2007. "Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1163-1212, May.
    6. Janine Aron & John Muellbauer, 2013. "New Methods for Forecasting Inflation, Applied to the US," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(5), pages 637-661, October.
    7. Robert J. Gordon, 1998. "Foundations of the Goldilocks Economy: Supply Shocks and the Time-Varying NAIRU," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 297-346.
    8. Zheng Liu & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2010. "Inflation: mind the gap," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue jan19.
    9. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(1 (Spring), pages 215-283.
    10. Timothy Cogley & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Thomas J. Sargent, 2010. "Inflation-Gap Persistence in the US," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 43-69, January.
    11. John C. Williams, 2009. "The risk of deflation," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue mar27.
    12. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    13. Sargent, Thomas & Surico, Paolo, 2008. "Monetary policies and low-frequency manifestations of the quantity theory," Discussion Papers 26, Monetary Policy Committee Unit, Bank of England.
    14. Beaudry, Paul & Koop, Gary, 1993. "Do recessions permanently change output?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 149-163, April.
    15. Andrew Levin & Jeremy Piger, 2003. "Is Inflation Persistence Intrinsic in Industrial Economies?," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 298, Society for Computational Economics.
    16. Roberto M. Billi, 2009. "Was monetary policy optimal during past deflation scares?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 94(Q III), pages 67-98.
    17. Hooker, Mark A, 2002. "Are Oil Shocks Inflationary? Asymmetric and Nonlinear Specifications versus Changes in Regime," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(2), pages 540-561, May.
    18. Stefano Eusepi & Bart Hobijn & Andrea Tambalotti, 2010. "The housing drag on core inflation," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue apr5.
    19. Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele & Momferatou, Daphne & Onorante, Luca, 2014. "Short-term inflation projections: A Bayesian vector autoregressive approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 635-644.
    20. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer & Giovanni P. Olivei, 2010. "The role of expectations and output in the inflation process: an empirical assessment," Public Policy Brief, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    21. George A. Akerlof & William R. Dickens & George L. Perry, 1996. "The Macroeconomics of Low Inflation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 27(1), pages 1-76.
    22. Flint Brayton & John M. Roberts & John C. Williams, 1999. "What's happened to the Phillips curve?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    23. Benati, Luca, 2009. "Long run evidence on money growth and inflation," Working Paper Series 1027, European Central Bank.
    24. Mr. Andre Meier, 2010. "Still Minding the Gap—Inflation Dynamics during Episodes of Persistent Large Output Gaps," IMF Working Papers 2010/189, International Monetary Fund.
    25. Andrew Atkeson & Lee E. Ohanian, 2001. "Are Phillips curves useful for forecasting inflation?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 25(Win), pages 2-11.
    26. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    27. Timothy Cogley & Argia M. Sbordone, 2008. "Trend Inflation, Indexation, and Inflation Persistence in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2101-2126, December.
    28. Jane K. Dokko & Brian M. Doyle & Skander J. van den Heuvel & Michael T. Kiley & Jinill Kim & Shane M. Sherlund & Jae W. Sim, 2009. "Monetary policy and the housing bubble," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Modeling Inflation After the Crisis," Working Papers 2010-1, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    2. Faust, Jon & Wright, Jonathan H., 2013. "Forecasting Inflation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2-56, Elsevier.
    3. Kevin Lansing, 2009. "Time Varying U.S. Inflation Dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(2), pages 304-326, April.
    4. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C., 2010. "Inflation Persistence," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 9, pages 423-486, Elsevier.
    5. Gbaguidi, David, 2012. "La courbe de Phillips : temps d’arbitrage et/ou arbitrage de temps," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 88(1), pages 87-119, mars.
    6. Gbaguidi DAVID, 2011. "Expectations Impact On The Effectiveness Of The Inflation-Real Activity Trade-Off," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 2(2), pages 141-181.
    7. Baxa Jaromír & Plašil Miroslav & Vašíček Bořek, 2017. "Inflation and the steeplechase between economic activity variables: evidence for G7 countries," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-42, January.
    8. Gbaguidi, David Sedo, 2011. "Regime Switching in a New Keynesian Phillips Curve with Non-zero Steady-state Inflation Rate," MPRA Paper 35481, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Michael Dotsey & Shigeru Fujita & Tom Stark, 2018. "Do Phillips Curves Conditionally Help to Forecast Inflation?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(4), pages 43-92, September.
    10. Moses Tule & Afees Salisu & Charles Chiemeke, 2020. "Improving Nigeria’s Inflation Forecast with Oil Price: The Role of Estimators," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(1), pages 191-229, March.
    11. Takushi Kurozumi & Willem Van Zandweghe, 2023. "A Theory of Intrinsic Inflation Persistence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(8), pages 1961-2000, December.
    12. Stephane Dupraz, 2017. "A Kinked-Demand Theory of Price Rigidity," 2017 Meeting Papers 387, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Marlene Amstad & Simon M. Potter & Robert W. Rich, 2014. "The FRBNY staff underlying inflation gauge: UIG," Staff Reports 672, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    14. Berger, Tino & Everaert, Gerdie & Vierke, Hauke, 2016. "Testing for time variation in an unobserved components model for the U.S. economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 179-208.
    15. Jan J. J. Groen & Richard Paap & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2013. "Real-Time Inflation Forecasting in a Changing World," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 29-44, January.
    16. Elmar Mertens & James M. Nason, 2020. "Inflation and professional forecast dynamics: An evaluation of stickiness, persistence, and volatility," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(4), pages 1485-1520, November.
    17. Sophocles Mavroeidis & Mikkel Plagborg-Møller & James H. Stock, 2014. "Empirical Evidence on Inflation Expectations in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(1), pages 124-188, March.
    18. Chi-Young Choi & Young Se Kim & Róisín O'Sullivan, 2011. "Inflation Targeting and Relative Price Variability: What Difference Does Inflation Targeting Make?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(4), pages 934-957, April.
    19. Clark, Todd E. & Doh, Taeyoung, 2014. "Evaluating alternative models of trend inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 426-448.
    20. Pym Manopimoke, 2015. "Globalization and International Inflation Dynamics: The Role of the Global Output Gap," PIER Discussion Papers 8, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation (Finance); Phillips curve; Unemployment; Financial crises;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    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:fip:fedkpr:y:2010:p:173-220. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Zach Kastens (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.html .

    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.