Inflation Expectations

Inflation Expectations
Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2009-12-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135179778

Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Macroeconomic Performance in a Globalising Economy

Macroeconomic Performance in a Globalising Economy
Author: Robert Anderton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2010-11-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1139493825

The process of globalisation has been ongoing for centuries, but few would doubt that it has accelerated and intensified in recent decades. This acceleration is evidenced as much by the strong synchronicity in the rapid transmission of financial crises starting in late 2007 as it is by the decade of almost unprecedented growth in international trade and financial market liberalisation that preceded it. This book shows how the international economy has become more connected via increased production, trade, capital flows and financial linkages. Using a variety of methodologies, including both panel econometrics and DSGE modelling, a team of experts from academia, central banks and the IMF examine how this increased globalisation has affected competitiveness, productivity, inflation and the labour market. This timely contribution to the globalisation literature provides a longer-term perspective while also evaluating some of the potential implications for policy makers, particularly from a European perspective.

Macroeconomic Analysis and International Finance

Macroeconomic Analysis and International Finance
Author: Georgios P. Kouretas
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 178350756X

Banking sector transformation, economic growth and inequality and exchange rate arrangements are critical issues whose importance has been highlighted during the recent financial crisis. This volume contains new research on the relationships between economic growth, inequality and the financial sector.

EU Economic Policy at the Dawn of the Century

EU Economic Policy at the Dawn of the Century
Author: Patrick M. Crowley
Publisher: Nova Publishers
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781600219474

The European Union (EU) has undergone remarkable change in the last century, from frequent conflicts in the first part of the last century, to peace, stability and unprecedented prosperity in the second half. As we move into the first half of the twenty-first century, there is also a sense that a fragile economic renaissance is underway in the EU, but one that is fraught with challenges and difficulties. Contrary to many of the vociferous critics of the single currency project (mostly US economists and some UK politicians, most notably Thatcher (2002), to date the project has met with remarkable success, despite the dramatic fall in the euro from its launch date and the strains imposed on EU economies following the recent downturn in the world economy. EU Enlargement has now been successfully completed, and although there have been painful discussions on EU institutional reform to accommodate the expansion, a breakdown in the 2005 budget negotiations and an controversy over the implementation of the Stability and Growth pact, it is likely that this will not impede the addition of new Member States from the east.

Expectations' Anchoring and Inflation Persistence

Expectations' Anchoring and Inflation Persistence
Author: Mr.Rudolfs Bems
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 31
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 148439223X

Understanding the sources of inflation persistence is crucial for monetary policy. This paper provides an empirical assessment of the influence of inflation expectations' anchoring on the persistence of inflation. We construct a novel index of inflation expectations' anchoring using survey-based inflation forecasts for 45 economies starting in 1989. We then study the response of consumer prices to terms-of-trade shocks for countries with flexible exchange rates. We find that these shocks have a significant and persistent effect on consumer price inflation when expectations are poorly anchored. By contrast, inflation reacts by less and returns quickly to its pre-shock level when expectations are strongly anchored.

Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks

Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks
Author: Davide Debortoli
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2017-07-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1484311752

Yes, it makes a lot of sense. This paper studies how to design simple loss functions for central banks, as parsimonious approximations to social welfare. We show, both analytically and quantitatively, that simple loss functions should feature a high weight on measures of economic activity, sometimes even larger than the weight on inflation. Two main factors drive our result. First, stabilizing economic activity also stabilizes other welfare relevant variables. Second, the estimated model features mitigated inflation distortions due to a low elasticity of substitution between monopolistic goods and a low interest rate sensitivity of demand. The result holds up in the presence of measurement errors, with large shocks that generate a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and resource utilization, and also when ensuring a low probability of hitting the zero lower bound on interest rates.

Asymmetry and Aggregation in the EU

Asymmetry and Aggregation in the EU
Author: D. Mayes
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2011-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230304648

This book presents a clear exposition of what constitutes asymmetry in economics. It provides an empirical application of these ideas in the case of the EU. In particular, it shows how important asymmetry is for the appropriate design of policy in the Euro Area.

Asset Prices and Monetary Policy

Asset Prices and Monetary Policy
Author: John Y. Campbell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2008-11-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226092127

Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction of central banks, asset markets, and the general economy to forge a new understanding of the challenges facing policy makers as they manage an increasingly complex economic system. The contributors examine how central bankers determine their policy prescriptions with reference to the fluctuating housing market, the balance of debt and credit, changing beliefs of investors, the level of commodity prices, and other factors. At a time when the public has never been more involved in stocks, retirement funds, and real estate investment, this insightful book will be useful to all those concerned with the current state of the economy.

A Phillips Curve with Anchored Expectations and Short-Term Unemployment

A Phillips Curve with Anchored Expectations and Short-Term Unemployment
Author: Laurence M. Ball
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2015-02-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498321070

This paper examines the recent behavior of core inflation in the United States. We specify a simple Phillips curve based on the assumptions that inflation expectations are fully anchored at the Federal Reserve’s target, and that labor-market slack is captured by the level of shortterm unemployment. This equation explains inflation behavior since 2000, including the failure of high total unemployment since 2008 to reduce inflation greatly. The fit of our equation is especially good when we measure core inflation with the Cleveland Fed’s series on weighted median inflation. We also propose a more general Phillips curve in which core inflation depends on short-term unemployment and on expected inflation as measured by the Survey of Professional Forecasters. This specification fits U.S. inflation since 1985, including both the anchored-expectations period of the 2000s and the preceding period when expectations were determined by past levels of inflation.

Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession

Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession
Author: Laurence M. Ball
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1455263389

This paper examines inflation dynamics in the United States since 1960, with a particular focus on the Great Recession. A puzzle emerges when Phillips curves estimated over 1960-2007 are ussed to predice inflation over 2008-2010: inflation should have fallen by more than it did. We resolve this puzzle with two modifications of the Phillips curve, both suggested by theories of costly price adjustment: we measure core inflation with the median CPI inflation rate, and we allow the slope of the Phillips curve to change with the level and vairance of inflation. We then examine the hypothesis of anchored inflation expectations. We find that expectations have been fully "shock-anchored" since the 1980s, while "level anchoring" has been gradual and partial, but significant. It is not clear whether expectations are sufficiently anchored to prevent deflation over the next few years. Finally, we show that the Great Recession provides fresh evidence against the New Keynesian Phillips curve with rational expectations.