Low Passthrough from Inflation Expectations to Income Growth Expectations: Why People Dislike Inflation
Ina Hajdini, Edward S. Knotek II, John Leer, Mathieu Pedemonte, Robert W. Rich, and Raphael S. Schoenle
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 output fluctuations. The survey results and model analysis provide a labor market channel for why people dislike inflation.
Mis-specified Forecasts and Myopia in an Estimated New Keynesian Model
Ina Hajdini
The paper considers a New Keynesian framework in which agents form expectations based on a combination of autoregressive mis-specified forecasts and myopia. The proposed expectations formation process is shown to be consistent with all three empirical facts on consensus inflation forecasts. However, while mis-specified forecasts can be both sufficient and necessary to match all three facts, myopia alone is neither. The paper then derives the general equilibrium solution consistent with the proposed expectations formation process and estimates the model with likelihood-based Bayesian methods, yielding three novel results: (i) macroeconomic data strongly prefer a combination of autoregressive mis-specified forecasting rules - of the VAR(1) or AR(1) type - and myopia over other alternatives; (ii) no strong evidence is found in favor of VAR(1) forecasts over simple AR(1) rules; and (iii) frictions such as habit in consumption, which are typically necessary for models with full-information rational expectations, are significantly less important, because the proposed expectations generate substantial internal persistence and amplification to exogenous shocks. Simulated inflation expectations data from the estimated general equilibrium model reflect the three empirical facts on forecasting data.
The Intermittent Phillips Curve: Finding a Stable (But Persistence-Dependent) Phillips Curve Model Specification
Richard Ashley and Randal J. Verbrugge
We establish that the Phillips curve is persistence-dependent: inflation responds differently to persistent versus moderately persistent (or versus transient) fluctuations in the unemployment rate gap. This persistence-dependent relationship appears to align with business-cycle stages and is thus consistent with existing theory. Previous work fails to model this dependence, thereby finding numerous "inflation puzzles" – e.g., missing inflation/disinflation – noted in the literature. Our specification eliminates these puzzles; for example, the Phillips curve has not weakened, nor was inflation "stubbornly low" in 2019. The model's coefficients are stable, and it provides accurate conditional recursive forecasts through the Great Recession. There are important monetary policy implications.
Post-COVID Inflation Dynamics: Higher for Longer
Randal J. Verbrugge and Saeed Zaman
In the December 2022 Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), the median projection for four-quarter core PCE inflation in the fourth quarter of 2025 is 2.1 percent. This same SEP has unemployment rising by nine-tenths, to 4.6 percent, by the end of 2023. We assess the plausibility of this projection using a specific nonlinear model that embeds an empirically successful nonlinear Phillips curve specification into a structural model, identifying it via an underutilized data-dependent method. We model core PCE inflation using three components that align with those noted by Chair Powell in his December 14, 2022, press conference: housing, core goods, and core-services-less-housing. Our model projects that conditional on the SEP unemployment rate path and a rapid deceleration of core goods prices, core PCE inflation moderates to only 2.75 percent by the end of 2025: inflation will be higher for longer. A deep recession would be necessary to achieve the SEP’s projected inflation path. A simple reduced-form welfare analysis, which abstracts from any danger of inflation expectations becoming unanchored, suggests that such a recession would not be optimal.
Aggregate Implications of Heterogeneous Inflation Expectations: The Role of Individual Experience
Mathieu Pedemonte, Hiroshi Toma, and Esteban Verdugo
We show that inflation expectations are heterogeneous and depend on past individual experiences. We propose a diagnostic expectations-augmented Kalman filter to represent consumers’ heterogeneous inflation expectations-formation process, where heterogeneity comes from an anchoring-to-the-past mechanism. We estimate the diagnosticity parameter that governs the inflation expectations-formation process and show that the model can replicate systematic differences in inflation expectations across cohorts in the US. We introduce this mechanism into a New Keynesian model and find that heterogeneous expectations anchor aggregate responses to the agents’ memory, making shocks more persistent. Central banks should be more active to prevent agents from remembering current shocks far into the future.
House Prices and Rents in the 21st Century
Lara Loewenstein and Paul S. Willen
We study the joint evolution of prices and rents of residential property. We construct indices for both rents and prices of renter-occupied properties and for prices of owner-occupied properties. We then decompose the change in the price of occupant-owned property into three components: (1) changes in rent, (2) changes in the relative prices of investor- and occupant-owned properties, and (3) changes in the price-rent ratio. We use a simple model to link our decomposition to different sources of variation in house prices. We argue that while the 2000s boom was plausibly driven by exuberant expectations, the boom of the 2020s more likely resulted from a preference shock.
The Transmission of International Monetary Policy Shocks on Firms' Expectations
Serafin Frache, Rodrigo Lluberas, Mathieu Pedemonte, and Javier Turen
Motivated by the dominant role of the US dollar, we explore how monetary policy (MP) shocks in the US can affect a small open economy through the expectation channel. We combine data from a panel survey of firms' expectations in Uruguay with granular information about firms' debt position and total imports on a monthly basis. We show that a contractionary MP shock in the US reduces firms' inflation and cost expectations in Uruguay. This result contrasts with the inflationary effect of this shock on the Uruguayan economy, suggesting uncertainty about the policy regime. We discuss the issues and challenges of this expectation channel.
The Hard Road to a Soft Landing: Evidence from a (Modestly) Nonlinear Structural Model
Randal J. Verbrugge and Saeed Zaman
What drove inflation so high in 2022? Can it drop rapidly without a recession? The Phillips curve is central to the answers; its proper (nonlinear) specification reveals that the relationship is strong and frequency dependent, and inflation is very persistent. We embed this empirically successful Phillips curve – incorporating a supply-shocks variable – into a structural model. Identification is achieved using an underutilized data-dependent method. Despite imposing anchored inflation expectations and a rapid relaxation of supply-chain problems, we find that absent a recession, inflation will be more than 3 percent by the end of 2025. A simple welfare analysis supports a mild recession as preferred to an extended period of elevated inflation, under a typical loss function.
