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Working Paper
A Closer Look at the Behavior of Uncertainty and Disagreement: Micro Evidence from the Euro Area
This paper examines point and density forecasts of real GDP growth, inflation and unemployment from the European Central Bank?s Survey of Professional Forecasters. We present individual uncertainty measures and introduce individual point- and density-based measures of disagreement. The data indicate substantial heterogeneity and persistence in respondents? uncertainty and disagreement, with uncertainty associated with prominent respondent effects and disagreement associated with prominent time effects. We also examine the co-movement between uncertainty and disagreement and find an ...
Working Paper
Low Passthrough from Inflation Expectations to Income Growth Expectations: Why People Dislike Inflation
Using a novel experimental setup, we study the direction of causality between consumers’ inflation expectations and their income growth expectations. In a large, nationally representative survey of US consumers, we find that the rate of passthrough from expected inflation to expected income growth is incomplete, on the order of 20 percent. There is no statistically significant effect going in the other direction. Passthrough varies systematically with demographic and socioeconomic factors, with greater passthrough for higher-income individuals than lower-income individuals, although it is ...
Report
Structural change in U.S. wage determination
This paper provides an empirical investigation into the determinants and stability of the aggregate wage inflation process in the United States over the 1967-2000 period. Using compensation per hour as the measure of wages, we specify a Phillips curve model that links wage growth to its past values as well as to the unemployment rate, price inflation, labor productivity growth, and an additional set of labor market variables. The results do not reject the hypothesis that real wages and labor productivity move proportionally in the long run. More important, endogenous structural break tests ...
Working Paper
Heterogeneity and the Effects of Aggregation on Wage Growth
This paper focuses on the implications of alternative methods of aggregating individual wage data for the behavior of economy-wide wage growth. The analysis is motivated by evidence of significant heterogeneity in individual wage growth and its cyclicality. Because of this heterogeneity, the choice of aggregation will affect the properties of economy-wide wage growth measures. To assess the importance of this consideration, we provide a decomposition of wage growth into aggregation effects and composition effects and use the decomposition to compare growth in an average wage—specifically ...
Working Paper
Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations: Theory and Evidence
Based on indirect utility theory, we introduce a novel methodology of measuring inflation expectations indirectly. This methodology starts at the individual level, asking consumers about the change in income required to buy the same amounts of goods and services one year ahead. Analytically, our methodology possesses smaller ex-post aggregate inflation forecast errors relative to forecasts based on conventional survey questions. We ask this question in a large-scale, high-frequency survey of consumers in the US and 14 countries, and we show that indirect consumer inflation expectations ...
Journal Article
Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics | 2019 CEBRA Annual Meeting Session Summary
The relationship between the Phillips curve and inflation has become weaker over time, producing questions regarding how policymakers might connect inflation to the rest of the economy. Presentations given during the “Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics” session of the Central Bank Research Association’s annual meeting focused on the intersection of monetary policy and inflation dynamics to examine the ways in which policy might impact inflation and related expectations and processes. This Economic Commentary summarizes the papers presented during this session.
Working Paper
Low Passthrough from Inflation Expectations to Income Growth Expectations: Why People Dislike Inflation
We implement a novel methodology to disentangle two-way causality in inflation and income expectations in a large, nationally representative survey of US consumers. We find a 20 percent passthrough from expected inflation to expected income growth, but no statistically significant effect in the other direction. Passthrough is higher for higher-income individuals and men. Higher inflation expectations increase consumers’ likelihood to search for higher-paying new jobs. In a calibrated search-and-matching model, dampened responses of wages to demand and supply shocks translate into greater ...
Discussion Paper
Compensation Growth and Slack in the Current Economic Environment
Following a significant slowing during the recent recession, growth in various labor compensation measures has stabilized during the past two to three years. This stabilization is puzzling because it’s widely held that a significant amount of slack remains in the economy. Accordingly, this large amount of slack should result in a further slowing in compensation (wage) growth. In this post, we show that there’s a very mild trade-off between compensation growth and resource slack, even though slack is sizable. Consequently, the observation that there’s slow but steady growth in labor ...
Journal Article
The parts are more than the whole: separating goods and services to predict core inflation
Economists have not been altogether successful in their efforts to forecast ?core? inflation?an inflation measure that typically excludes volatile food and energy prices. One possible explanation is that the models used to make these forecasts fail to distinguish the forces influencing price changes in core services from those affecting price changes in core goods. While core services inflation depends on long-run inflation expectations and the degree of slack in the labor market, core goods inflation depends on short-run inflation expectations and import prices. By using a composite model ...
Journal Article
Flexible Average Inflation Targeting and Inflation Expectations: A Look at the Reaction by Professional Forecasters
This Commentary examines the response of longer-run inflation expectations to the FOMC’s August 2020 announced switch to a flexible average inflation-targeting (FAIT) regime. The data indicate an upward shift in the lower end (below 2 percent) of the distribution of inflation expectations and a stronger anchoring of expectations around the 2 percent inflation objective following the announcement, evidence that is consistent with intended effects of the change in the monetary policy framework. To provide context, we also include a retrospective assessment of the response of inflation ...