IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16488.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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.

Suggested Citation

  • James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Modeling Inflation After the Crisis," NBER Working Papers 16488, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16488
    Note: EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16488.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, Oxford University Press, 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. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Beaudry, Paul & Koop, Gary, 1993. "Do recessions permanently change output?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 149-163, April.
    6. Andrew T. Levin & Jeremy M. Piger, 2003. "Is inflation persistence intrinsic in industrial economies?," Working Papers 2002-023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    7. 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.
    8. Benati, Luca, 2009. "Long run evidence on money growth and inflation," Working Paper Series 1027, European Central Bank.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. John C. Williams, 2009. "The risk of deflation," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue mar27.
    12. Roberto M. Billi, 2009. "Was monetary policy optimal during past deflation scares?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q III, pages 67-98.
    13. Bart Hobijn & Stefano Eusepi & Andrea Tambalotti, 2010. "The housing drag on core inflation," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue apr5.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.).
    17. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    18. 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.
    19. Zheng Liu & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2010. "Inflation: mind the gap," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue jan19.
    20. 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.
    21. Jane Dokko & Brian M. Doyle & Michael T. Kiley & Jinill Kim & Shane Sherlund & Jae Sim & Skander Van Den Heuvel, 2011. "Monetary policy and the global housing bubble," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 26(66), pages 233-283, April.
    22. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    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

    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:nbr:nberwo:16488. 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: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.