IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/18116.html

It's Baaack: The Surge in Inflation in the 2020s and the Return of the Non-Linear Phillips Curve

Author

Listed:
  • Benigno, Pierpaolo
  • Eggertsson, Gauti

Abstract

This paper proposes a non-linear New Keynesian Phillips curve (Inv-L NK Phillips Curve) to explain the surge of inflation in the 2020s. Economic slack is measured as firms' job vacancies over the number of unemployed workers. After showing empirical evidence of statistically significant nonlinearities, we propose a New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions, complemented by a form of wage rigidity, in the spirit of Phillips (1958), that generates strong nonlinearities. Policy implications include the thesis that appropriate monetary policy can bring inflation down without a significant recession and that the recent inflationary surge was mostly generated by a "labor shortage" -- i.e. an exceptionally tight labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Benigno, Pierpaolo & Eggertsson, Gauti, 2023. "It's Baaack: The Surge in Inflation in the 2020s and the Return of the Non-Linear Phillips Curve," CEPR Discussion Papers 18116, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18116
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP18116
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    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. Ichiro Fukunaga & Yui Kishaba & Nao Shibata & Shunichi Yoneyama, 2025. "Uncertainty in the Formation of Inflation Expectations in Japan: An Analysis Using the Macroeconomic Model Q-JEM," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 25-E-3, Bank of Japan.
    3. Basu, Susanto, 2024. "Discussion of “Understanding the international rise and fall of inflation since 2020”," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(S).
    4. Philippe Goulet Coulombe & Karin Klieber & Christophe Barrette & Maximilian Goebel, 2024. "Maximally Forward-Looking Core Inflation," Papers 2404.05209, arXiv.org.
    5. Jonathon Hazell & Stephan Hobler, 2024. "Do Deficits Cause Inflation? A High Frequency Narrative Approach," Discussion Papers 2439, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    6. Philip Bunn & Lena Anayi & Emily Barnes & Nicholas Bloom & Paul Mizen & Gregory Thwaites & Ivan Yotzov, 2024. "How Curvy is the Phillips Curve?," NBER Working Papers 33234, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Régis Barnichon & Adam Shapiro, 2024. "Phillips Meets Beveridge," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation in the COVID Era and Beyond, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Coenen, Günter & Mazelis, Falk & Motto, Roberto & Ristiniemi, Annukka & Smets, Frank & Warne, Anders & Wouters, Raf, 2025. "Inflation and monetary policy in medium-sized New Keynesian DSGE models," Working Paper Series 3137, European Central Bank.
    9. Haschka, Rouven E., 2024. "Examining the New Keynesian Phillips Curve in the U.S.: Why has the relationship between inflation and unemployment weakened?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(4).
    10. Luca Fornaro, 2025. "Fiscal stimulus with supply constraints," Economics Working Papers 1922, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    11. Michaillat, Pascal & Saez, Emmanuel, 2024. "Beveridgean Phillips Curve," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5zt7g6hk, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    12. Mary C. Daly, 2024. "Getting It Right: Meeting Uncertainty with Conditionality," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2024(17), pages 1-6, July.
    13. Mai Chi Dao & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Daniel Leigh & Prachi Mishra, 2024. "Understanding the International Rise and Fall of Inflation since 2020," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation in the COVID Era and Beyond, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Francesco Furlanetto & Antoine Lepetit, 2024. "The Slope of the Phillips Curve," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-043, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General

    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:cpr:ceprdp:18116. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.