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.

Heterogeneity in Expectations, Official Information and Price-setting Behavior

Heterogeneity in Expectations, Official Information and Price-setting Behavior
Author: Gustavo Rojas-Matute
Publisher:
Total Pages: 95
Release: 2021
Genre: Business enterprises
ISBN:

How firms set their prices is of special importance in macroeconomics and, in particular, for monetary policy. This dissertation investigates price-setting behavior from two different perspectives and two different environments, from low inflation to hyperinflation.In Chapter 1, I point out that firms seem to pay more attention to GDP growth rates in economies with well-anchored inflation expectations than CPI inflation. I study how this heterogeneity affects price-setting behavior. I analyze three types of firms: those that only track GDP, those that only track CPI, and those that track both. The findings can be summarized as follows: (i) both GDP growth rate and CPI inflation expectations affect price-setting behavior but in opposite directions; (ii) the impact of long-run inflation expectations on price-setting behavior is more substantial than short-run expectations; (iii) in the presence of adjustment costs, the frequency of price changes of those firms that only track GDP growth rate is highly correlated with the series estimated by Nakamura et al., (2018) with data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); (iv) in the short run, the output response to a monetary shock is larger while the price response is smaller in those firms that only track GDP growth rate than in those firms that only update CPI; (v) adjustment costs amplify monetary non-neutrality in only-GDP firms. If the aggregate effect is driven by ``only-GDP" firms, as suggested in (iii), the results are consistent with recent findings suggesting that the Phillips curve is flat (Del Negro et al., 2020, Hazell et al., 2020).In Chapter 2, I take advantage of a ``natural experiment" to study the impact of the lack of official information on price-setting behavior. In particular, I study a case between December 2015 and May 2019, when the Central Bank of Venezuela stopped releasing official economic statistics, including inflation rate, GDP, and balance of payments. Using a combination of data sets from the Billion Prices Project, I find that the lack of official information increases the size of price changes (intensive margin), leading the intensive margin to be the main driver of the variance of the inflation. The empirical results are confirmed with the calibration of a price-setting behavior model. The model suggests that the turning point occurred when the Central Bank started delaying the publications (2012-2014) before deciding to stop them entirely in 2015. These findings are groundbreaking because they occur in a context of hyperinflation where prices change very frequently and differ from the most recent literature that has shown that the extensive margin contributes the most during high inflation and hyperinflation (Alvarez et al., 2019, Gagnon, 2009). The evidence also suggests that, despite the surge of different non-official inflation indicators publicly available, firms rely on private sources.

Followers Or Ignorants? Inflation Expectations and Price Setting Behavior of Firms

Followers Or Ignorants? Inflation Expectations and Price Setting Behavior of Firms
Author: Philipp Dörrenberg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN:

Using a randomized survey experiment, we investigate how firms' inflation expectations shape their price setting. We establish that firms fully pass through inflation expectations to prices in times of high inflation, consistent with Calvo pricing. When informed about central bank inflation forecasts, firms indicate significantly lower planned price increases than their untreated peers. Additionally, treated firms pass through less of their pre-treatment inflation expectations than control-group firms, even more so when additionally receiving central bank forecasts on energy and labor cost developments. Hence, communication of inflation forecasts can shift expectations and prices, and therefore serve as an effective policy tool.

Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy

Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy
Author: Jeff Fuhrer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2009-09-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 026225820X

Current perspectives on the Phillips curve, a core macroeconomic concept that treats the relationship between inflation and unemployment. In 1958, economist A. W. Phillips published an article describing what he observed to be the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment; subsequently, the “Phillips curve” became a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. But today's Phillips curve is not the same as the original one from fifty years ago; the economy, our understanding of price setting behavior, the determinants of inflation, and the role of monetary policy have evolved significantly since then. In this book, some of the top economists working today reexamine the theoretical and empirical validity of the Phillips curve in its more recent specifications. The contributors consider such questions as what economists have learned about price and wage setting and inflation expectations that would improve the way we use and formulate the Phillips curve, what the Phillips curve approach can teach us about inflation dynamics, and how these lessons can be applied to improving the conduct of monetary policy. Contributors Lawrence Ball, Ben Bernanke, Oliver Blanchard, V. V. Chari, William T. Dickens, Stanley Fischer, Jeff Fuhrer, Jordi Gali, Michael T. Kiley, Robert G. King, Donald L. Kohn, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little, Bartisz Mackowiak, N. Gregory Mankiw, Virgiliu Midrigan, Giovanni P. Olivei, Athanasios Orphanides, Adrian R. Pagan, Christopher A. Pissarides, Lucrezia Reichlin, Paul A. Samuelson, Christopher A. Sims, Frank R. Smets, Robert M. Solow, Jürgen Stark, James H. Stock, Lars E. O. Svensson, John B. Taylor, Mark W. Watson

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.

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003
Author: Mark Gertler
Publisher: Mit Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262072533

The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents pioneering work in macroeconomics by leading academic researchers to an audience of public policymakers and the academic community. Each commissioned paper is followed by comments and discussion. This year's edition provides a mix of cutting-edge research and policy analysis on such topics as productivity and information technology, the increase in wealth inequality, behavioral economics, and inflation.

Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality

Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality
Author: Jonathan Benchimol
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2019-08-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513511343

The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia regarding the output gap, revenue, or interest rate. To the extent that bygones are not bygones under price level targeting, rational inflation expectations is a minimal condition for optimality in a behavioral world. Instrument rules implementation of this optimal policy is shown to be infeasible, questioning the ability of simple rules à la Taylor (1993) to assist the conduct of monetary policy. Bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with welfare losses.

Inflationary Expectations and Price Setting Behavior

Inflationary Expectations and Price Setting Behavior
Author: Ray C. Fair
Publisher:
Total Pages: 52
Release: 1989
Genre: Monopolistic competition
ISBN:

This paper tests for the existence of expectational effects in very disaggregate price equations. Price equations are estimated using monthly data for each of 40 products. The dynamic specification of the equations is also tested, including whether the equations should be specified in level form or in change form. Two expectational hypotheses are used, one in which expectations of the aggregate price level are a function of the past values of the price level and one in which expectations are rational. Under the first hypothesis the lag length is estimated along with the other parameters, and under the second hypothesis the lead length is estimated along with the other parameters. The results strongly support the hypothesis that aggregate price expectations affect individual pricing decisions. The results do not discriminate very well between the level and change forms of the price equation, although there is a slight edge for the level form. The lag and lead lengths are not estimated precisely, but in most cases the lag length is less than 30 months and the lead length is less than 5 months.