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Working Paper
Estimates of Cost-Price Passthrough from Business Survey Data
We examine businesses' price-setting practices via open-ended interviews and in a quantitative survey module with business contacts from the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Cleveland, and New York in December 2022 and January 2023. Businesses indicated that their prices were strongly influenced by demand, a desire to maintain steady profit margins, and wages and labor costs. Survey respondents expected reduced growth in costs and prices of about 5 percent on average over the next year. Backward-looking, forward-looking, and hypothetical scenarios reveal average cost-price passthrough of ...
Report
2013 Annual Report Why Inflation Is Very Low, and Why It Matters
One of the Federal Reserve?s mandates is maintaining stable prices. During my more than three decades in the Federal Reserve System, the focus has been primarily on avoiding high and variable inflation, and over most of that period, the Federal Reserve has successfully fulfilled its objective to keep inflation in check. More recently, however, our attention has turned to a less familiar concern?persistently low inflation. While high inflation has well-known costs for economic performance, the problems posed by persistently low inflation can be equally harmful. As its title promises, this ...
Journal Article
Consumer Inflation Expectations Across Surveys and over Time
Different survey-based measures of consumer inflation expectations have diverged in recent months. This Economic Commentary compares these measures and the survey questions underlying them. Our analysis suggests that the divergences across survey-based measures of inflation expectations can be attributed to various features and sample characteristics specific to each survey.
Journal Article
Expanding the Survey of Firms’ Inflation Expectations
The Survey of Firms’ Inflation Expectations (SoFIE) is a quarterly survey of chief executive officers and other top business executives in the United States that collects information about their inflation expectations. This Economic Commentary presents questions newly introduced to SoFIE—some related to inflation and others examining expectations for prices, costs, employment, and wages—and provides initial analysis of the collected responses. The expanded set of survey results will be updated on a quarterly basis on the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s website at clefed.org/SoFIE.
Journal Article
Changing Policy Rule Parameters Implied by the Median SEP Paths
This Commentary estimates the implied parameters of simple monetary policy rules using the median paths for the federal funds rate and other economic variables provided in the Federal Open Market Committee?s Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). The implied policy rule parameters appear to have changed over time, as the federal funds rate projections have become less responsive to the unemployment gap. This finding could reflect changes in policymakers? preferences, uncertainty over other aspects of the policy rule, or limitations of estimating simple monetary policy rules from the median ...
Journal Article
When Might the Federal Funds Rate Lift Off? Computing the Probabilities of Crossing Unemployment and Inflation Thresholds
The Federal Open Market Committee has been providing guidance to help markets anticipate when it will begin raising the federal funds rate target. The most recent guidance suggests that the target will not change at least until after an unemployment or infl ation threshold is breached. We use a forecasting model to estimate when these thresholds are likely to be breached. We also consider how an infl ation fl oor would affect the timing of liftoff.
Journal Article
The Slowdown in Residential Investment and Future Prospects
Using a statistical model, we find that three factors explain most of the decline in residential investment at the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014: the increase in mortgage rates since early 2013, the unusually cold winter, and a modest tightening of lending standards in the residential mortgage market. Future prospects for residential investment depend heavily on mortgage rates. A return to normal weather and easing lending standards would boost activity, but even moderate increases in mortgage rates through the end of next year could restrain residential investment going forward.
Journal Article
On the Relationships between Wages, Prices, and Economic Activity
We take a closer look at the connections between wages, prices, and economic activity. We find that causal relationships between wages and prices are difficult to identify, and the ability of wages to help predict future inflation is limited. Wages appear to be useful in assessing the current state of labor markets, but they are not necessarily sufficient for thinking about where the economy and inflation are going.
Journal Article
Measuring Inflation Forecast Uncertainty
Looking across a range of statistical models, we consider the likely path of future inflation and the uncertainty surrounding the models' predictions. The models suggest that inflation is on a rising path, and while inflation forecast uncertainty is somewhat elevated relative to the norms of the last 20 years, core inflation uncertainty is relatively low. For both inflation rates, forecast uncertainty is much lower as of the first quarter of 2015 than it was around the Great Recession.
Journal Article
Have Inflation Dynamics Changed?
Using a flexible statistical model to project inflation outcomes into the future, this Commentary finds that the most likely path for inflation based on recent inflation dynamics is generally similar to what would have been expected given inflation dynamics in the late 1990s, but there is more uncertainty around the forecast now than in the late 1990s.