IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2006-159.html

U.S. Inflation Dynamics: What Drives Them Over Different Frequencies?

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Ravi Balakrishnan
  • Mr. Sam Ouliaris

Abstract

This paper aims to improve the understanding of U.S. inflation dynamics by separating out structural from cyclical effects using frequency domain techniques. Most empirical studies of inflation dynamics do not distinguish between secular and cyclical movements, and we show that such a distinction is critical. In particular, we study traditional Phillips curve (TPC) and new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) models of inflation, and conclude that the long-run secular decline in inflation cannot be explained in terms of changes in external trade and global factor markets. These variables tend to impact inflation primarily over the business cycle. We infer that the secular decline in inflation may well reflect improved monetary policy credibility and, thus, maintaining low inflation in the long run is closely linked to anchored inflation expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Ravi Balakrishnan & Mr. Sam Ouliaris, 2006. "U.S. Inflation Dynamics: What Drives Them Over Different Frequencies?," IMF Working Papers 2006/159, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2006/159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=19378
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    2. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    3. Argia M. Sbordone & Timothy Cogley, 2004. "A Search for a Structural Phillips Curve," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 291, Society for Computational Economics.
    4. Bakhshi, Hasan & Khan, Hashmat & Rudolf, Barbara, 2007. "The Phillips curve under state-dependent pricing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2321-2345, November.
    5. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    6. Thomas Sargent & Noah Williams & Tao Zha, 2009. "The Conquest of South American Inflation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(2), pages 211-256, April.
    7. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1, August.
    8. Argia M. Sbordone & Timothy Cogley, 2004. "A Search for a Structural Phillips Curve," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 291, Society for Computational Economics.
    9. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    10. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "Inflation dynamics: A structural econometric analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 195-222, October.
    11. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2002. "Dissecting the cycle: a methodological investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 365-381, March.
    12. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1, August.
    13. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Lars E. O. Svensson, 1998. "Policy rules for inflation targeting," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue mar.
    14. Batini, Nicoletta & Jackson, Brian & Nickell, Stephen, 2005. "An open-economy new Keynesian Phillips curve for the U.K," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(6), pages 1061-1071, September.
    15. Glenn Rudebusch & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1999. "Policy Rules for Inflation Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 203-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Fischer, Stanley, 1977. "Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 191-205, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Erasmus K. Kersting & Mark A. Wynne, 2007. "Openness and inflation," Staff Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Apr.
    2. Pataracchia, Beatrice, 2011. "The spectral representation of Markov switching ARMA models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 11-15, July.
    3. Mr. Benjamin L Hunt, 2007. "U.K. Inflation and Relative Prices over the Last Decade: How Important was Globalization?," IMF Working Papers 2007/208, International Monetary Fund.

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Ravi Balakrishnan & J David Lopez-Salido, 2002. "Understanding UK inflation: the role of openness," Bank of England working papers 164, Bank of England.
    4. David Gbaguidi, 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.
    5. Michael Paetz, 2007. "Robust Control and Persistence in the New Keynesian Economy," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 20711, Hamburg University, Department of Economics.
    6. Leu, Shawn Chen-Yu & Sheen, Jeffrey, 2011. "A small New Keynesian state space model of the Australian economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 672-684.
    7. Ramos-Francia, Manuel & Torres, Alberto, 2008. "Inflation dynamics in Mexico: A characterization using the New Phillips curve," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 274-289, December.
    8. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 2006. "Intrinsic and Inherited Inflation Persistence," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(3), September.
    9. Borek Vašícek, 2011. "Inflation Dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve in Four Central European Countries," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(5), pages 71-100, September.
    10. Robert Dittmar & William T. Gavin, 2000. "What do New-Keynesian Phillips Curves imply for price-level targeting?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 82(Mar), pages 21-30.
    11. Sheedy, Kevin D., 2010. "Intrinsic inflation persistence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 1049-1061, November.
    12. Günter Coenen & Volker Wieland, 2002. "Inflation Dynamics and International Linkages: A Model of the United States, the Euro Area and Japan," Computing in Economics and Finance 2002 240, Society for Computational Economics.
    13. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    14. Richard Mash, 2002. "New Keynesian Microfundations Revisited: A Generalised Calvo-Taylor Model and the Desirability of Inflation vs. Price Level Targeting," Economics Series Working Papers 109, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Schmidt, Sebastian & Wieland, Volker, 2013. "The New Keynesian Approach to Dynamic General Equilibrium Modeling: Models, Methods and Macroeconomic Policy Evaluation," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 1439-1512, Elsevier.
    16. Coenen, Gunter & Wieland, Volker, 2005. "A small estimated euro area model with rational expectations and nominal rigidities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1081-1104, July.
    17. Thorvardur Tjörvi Ólafsson, 2006. "The New Keynesian Phillips Curve: In Search of Improvements and Adaptation to the Open Economy," Economics wp31_tjorvi, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    18. Rodríguez, Gabriel, 2010. "Using A Forward-Looking Phillips Curve to Estimate the Output Gap in Peru," Review of Applied Economics, Lincoln University, Department of Financial and Business Systems, vol. 6(01-2), pages 1-13, April.
    19. Basistha, Arabinda & Nelson, Charles R., 2007. "New measures of the output gap based on the forward-looking new Keynesian Phillips curve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 498-511, March.
    20. Guido Ascari & Argia M. Sbordone, 2014. "The Macroeconomics of Trend Inflation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 679-739, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    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:imf:imfwpa:2006/159. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.