IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Uncertainty over models and data: the rise and fall of American inflation

Author Info

  • Seth Pruitt

Abstract

An economic agent who is uncertain of her model updates her beliefs in response to the data. The updating is sensitive to measurement error which, in many cases of macroeconomic interest, is apparent from the process of data revision. I make this point through simple illustrations and then analyze a recent model of the Federal Reserve's role in U.S. inflation. The existing model succeeds at fitting inflation to optimal policy, but fails to link inflation to the economic trade-off at the heart of the story. I modify the model to account for data uncertainty and find that doing so ameliorates the existing problems. This suggests that the Fed's model uncertainty is largely overestimated by ignoring data uncertainty. Consequently, now there is an explanation for the rise and fall in inflation: the concurrent rise and fall in the perceived Philips curve trade-off.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/2008/962/default.htm
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/2008/962/ifdp962.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series International Finance Discussion Papers with number 962.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:962
Contact details of provider: Postal:
20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20551

Web page: http://www.federalreserve.gov/

More information through EDIRC

Order Information: Web: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/order.htm

Keywords: Uncertainty ; Econometric models ; Economic forecasting;

Other versions of this item:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:

as in new window
  1. Owyang, Michael T. & Ramey, Garey, 2001. "Regime Switching and Monetary Policy Measurement," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt24q32688, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
  2. Eric Ghysels & Norman R. Swanson & Myles Callan, 2002. "Monetary Policy Rules with Model and Data Uncertainty," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 69(2), pages 239-265, October.
  3. Graham Elliott & Allan Timmermann & Ivana Komunjer, 2005. "Estimation and Testing of Forecast Rationality under Flexible Loss," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(4), pages 1107-1125.
  4. Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2005. "Time Varying Structural Vector Autoregressions and Monetary Policy," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(3), pages 821-852.
  5. Carboni, Giacomo & Ellison, Martin, 2007. "Learning and the Great Inflation," CEPR Discussion Papers 6250, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Howrey, E Philip, 1978. "The Use of Preliminary Data in Econometric Forecasting," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 193-200, May.
  7. Tom Stark & Dean Croushore, 2001. "Forecasting with a real-time data set for macroeconomists," Working Papers 01-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
  8. Croushore, Dean & Stark, Tom, 2001. "A real-time data set for macroeconomists," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 111-130, November.
  9. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 1995. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(3), pages 253-63, July.
  10. Athanasios Orphanides amd John Williams, 2001. "Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 254, Society for Computational Economics.
  11. Jean Boivin, 2005. "Has US Monetary Policy Changed? Evidence from Drifting Coefficients and Real-Time Data," NBER Working Papers 11314, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Alastair Cunningham & Chris Jeffery & George Kapetanios & Vincent Labhard, 2007. "A State Space Approach To The Policymaker's Data Uncertainty Problem," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2006 168, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
  13. Athanasios Orphanides, 1998. "Monetary policy rules based on real-time data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1998-03, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Pablo Aguilar & Jesús Vázquez, 2015. "The role of term structure in an estimated DSGE model with learning," Discussion Papers (IRES - Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales) 2015007, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
  2. Christian Matthes & Thomas Lubik, 2013. "Indeterminacy and Learning: An Analysis of Monetary Policy in the Great Inflation," 2013 Meeting Papers 973, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  3. Lafuente, Juan A. & Pérez, Rafaela & Ruiz, Jesús, 2014. "Time-varying inflation targeting after the nineties," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 400-408.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:962. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Marlene Vikor)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.