IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedfwp/101543.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation Since the Pandemic: Lessons and Challenges

Author

Abstract

This paper reviews the drivers of the post-pandemic U.S. inflation surge and subsequent decline, including the behavior and role of inflation expectations. The sharp rise in inflation reflected severe imbalances between supply and demand stemming from the shocks of the pandemic and the policy response. Measures of short-term inflation expectations increased alongside realized inflation, especially those of households and firms, which may have contributed to inflation’s persistence through price- and wage-setting behavior. However, measures of longer-term inflation expectations remained generally well anchored, which likely prevented a larger or more lasting increase in inflation. The stability of longer-term inflation expectations, together with easing supply and demand imbalances, allowed inflation to fall from its peak in mid-2022 without a large increase in unemployment. We conclude by reviewing some lessons learned from this episode as well as potential risks to inflation going forward.

Suggested Citation

  • Ina Hajdini & Adam Hale Shapiro & Andrew Lee Smith & Daniel Villar Vallenas, 2025. "Inflation Since the Pandemic: Lessons and Challenges," Working Paper Series 2025-16, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:101543
    DOI: 10.24148/wp2025-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/wp2025-16.pdf
    File Function: Full text - article PDF
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.24148/wp2025-16?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:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Jakob de Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2024. "Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 425-457, June.
    2. Alberto Cavallo & Guillermo Cruces & Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2017. "Inflation Expectations, Learning, and Supermarket Prices: Evidence from Survey Experiments," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 1-35, July.
    3. Paul Beaudry, Chenyu Hou and Franck Portier, 2025. "On the Fragility of the Nonlinear Phillips Curve View of Recent Inflation," Discussion Papers dp25-01, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    4. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    5. Paul Beaudry & Chenyu Hou & Franck Portier, 2025. "On the Fragility of the Nonlinear Phillips Curve View of Recent Inflation," NBER Working Papers 33522, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Mary Amiti & Sebastian Heise & Fatih Karahan & Ayşegül Şahin, 2024. "Inflation Strikes Back: The Role of Import Competition and the Labor Market," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 71-131.
    7. Gadi Barlevy & R. Jason Faberman & Bart Hobijn & Ayşegül Şahin, 2024. "The Shifting Reasons for Beveridge Curve Shifts," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 83-106, Spring.
    8. Ferrante, Francesco & Graves, Sebastian & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2023. "The inflationary effects of sectoral reallocation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(S), pages 64-81.
    9. Brian Adams & Lara Loewenstein & Hugh Montag & Randal Verbrugge, 2024. "Disentangling Rent Index Differences: Data, Methods, and Scope," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 230-245, June.
    10. Francesco D’Acunto & Ulrike Malmendier & Juan Ospina & Michael Weber, 2021. "Exposure to Grocery Prices and Inflation Expectations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1615-1639.
    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. Kamps, Christophe & Bussière, Matthieu & Niessner, Birgit & Tristani, Oreste & Christoffel, Kai & Kapadia, Sujit & Ferrero, Giuseppe & Gilbert, Niels & Vlassopoulos, Thomas & Motto, Roberto & Gerke, R, 2025. "Report on monetary policy tools, strategy and communication," Occasional Paper Series 372, European Central Bank.
    2. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy, 2025. "Inflation, Expectations and Monetary Policy: What Have We Learned and to What End?," IZA Discussion Papers 17919, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Ángelo Gutiérrez-Daza, 2024. "Business Cycles when Consumers Learn by Shopping," Working Papers 2024-12, Banco de México.
    4. Crump, Richard K. & Eusepi, Stefano & Giannoni, Marc & Şahin, Ayşegül, 2024. "The unemployment–inflation trade-off revisited: The Phillips curve in COVID times," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(S).
    5. Hoffmann, Mathias & Mönch, Emanuel & Pavlova, Lora & Schultefrankenfeld, Guido, 2025. "A KISS for central bank communication in times of high inflation," Discussion Papers 12/2025, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. Ehrmann, Michael & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Kenny, Geoff, 2023. "Credibility gains from communicating with the public: evidence from the ECB’s new monetary policy strategy," Working Paper Series 2785, European Central Bank.
    7. Wehrhöfer, Nils, 2023. "Energy prices and inflation expectations: Evidence from households and firms," Discussion Papers 28/2023, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    8. Anastasia Matevosova, 2025. "Modelling Trust in the Central Bank Using Sentiment Analysis," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 84(1), pages 3-25, March.
    9. Chris Campos & Michael McMain & Mathieu Pedemonte, 2022. "Understanding Which Prices Affect Inflation Expectations," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2022(06), pages 1-7, April.
    10. Dräger, Lena & Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas, 2025. "Political shocks and inflation expectations: Evidence from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    11. James Mitchell & Saeed Zaman, 2023. "The Distributional Predictive Content of Measures of Inflation Expectations," Working Papers 23-31, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    12. Michael Weber & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Olivier Coibion, 2023. "The Expected, Perceived, and Realized Inflation of US Households Before and During the COVID19 Pandemic," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(1), pages 326-368, March.
    13. Michael Weber & Francesco D'Acunto & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Olivier Coibion, 2022. "The Subjective Inflation Expectations of Households and Firms: Measurement, Determinants, and Implications," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 157-184, Summer.
    14. Zhu, Xiaoke & Yu, Xiaohua, 2025. "Food inflation and macroeconomic dynamics in the US: Evidence from an estimated DSGE model," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    15. Dräger, Lena & Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas, 2025. "Peer Effects in Macroeconomic Expectations," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-739, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    16. Ina Hajdini & Edward S. Knotek & John Leer & Mathieu Pedemonte & Robert W. Rich & Raphael Schoenle, 2022. "Low Passthrough from Inflation Expectations to Income Growth Expectations: Why People Dislike Inflation," Working Papers 22-21R, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, revised 27 Mar 2023.
    17. DiGiuseppe, Matthew & Garriga, Ana Carolina & Kern, Andreas, 2025. "Partisan Bias in Inflation Expectations," MPRA Paper 124391, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Nathan Goldstein & Ohad Raveh, 2024. "Looking up the sky: unidentified aerial phenomena and macroeconomic attention," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-25, December.
    19. Viral V. Acharya & Matteo Crosignani & Tim Eisert & Christian Eufinger, 2023. "How Do Supply Shocks to Inflation Generalize? Evidence from the Pandemic Era in Europe," NBER Working Papers 31790, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Karadi, Peter & Amann, Juergen & Bachiller, Javier Sánchez & Seiler, Pascal & Wursten, Jesse, 2023. "Price setting on the two sides of the Atlantic - Evidence from supermarket scanner data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(S), pages 1-17.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E70 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fedfwp:101543. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.