Top Research Papers on Inflation

The sustained increase in oil and gasoline prices since mid-2020 has raised fears of persistently high U.S. inflation for years to come and rising inflation expectations, along with concerns about the emergence of a wage-price spiral. Using data through May 2022, we show that these concerns have been overstated. There is no evidence that gasoline price shocks have moved long-run household inflation expectations or that the inflationary effect of gasoline price shocks is persistent. The short-run effects on headline inflation are sizable, but have accounted for only a small fraction of overall ...

Counts data with excessive zeros are frequently encountered in practice. For example, the number of health services visits often includes many zeros representing the patients with no utilization during a follow-up time. A common feature of this type of data is that the count measure tends to have excessive zero beyond a common count distribution can accommodate, such as Poisson or negative binomial. Zero-inflated or hurdle models are often used to fit such data. Despite the increasing popularity of ZI and hurdle models, there is still a lack of investigation of the fundamental differences betw...

The Covid-19 Pandemic has led to changes in consumer expenditure patterns that can introduce significant bias in the measurement of inflation.I use data collected from credit and debit transactions in the US to update the official basket weights and estimate the impact on the Consumer Price Index (CPI).I find that the Covid inflation rate is higher than the official CPI in the US, for both headline and core indices.I also find similar results with Covid baskets in 10 out of 16 additional countries.The difference is significant and growing over time, as socialdistancing rules and behaviors are ...

We assess the prospects for central banks using inflation expectations as a policy tool for stabilization purposes. We review recent work on how expectations of agents are formed and how they affect their economic decisions. Empirical evidence suggests that inflation expectations of households and firms affect their actions but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear, especially for firms. Two additional limitations prevent policy-makers from being able to actively manage inflation expectations. First, available surveys of firms' expectations are systematically deficient, which can only be ad...

We review conceptual aspects of inflationary scenarios able to produce primordial black holes by amplifying the size of curvature fluctuations to the level required to trigger black hole formation. We identify general mechanisms to do so, both for single- and multiple-field inflation. In single-field inflation, the spectrum of curvature fluctuations is enhanced by pronounced gradients of background quantities controlling the cosmological dynamics, which can induce brief phases of non-slow-roll inflationary evolution. In multiple-field inflation, the amplification occurs through appropriate cou...

Abstract We investigate the flattening Phillips relation by making two departures from standard specifications. First, we measure slack using real activity variables that are bandpass filtered or year‐over‐year changes in activity (these are similar), instead of gaps. Second, we study the components of inflation instead of the standard aggregates. We find that some inflation components have strong and stable correlations with the cyclical component of real activity; these components tend to be relatively well‐measured and domestically determined. Other components, typically prices that are poo...

ABSTRACT The NANOGrav pulsar timing array experiment reported evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process affecting pulsar timing residuals in its 12.5-yr data set, which might be interpreted as the first detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). I examine whether the NANOGrav signal might be explained by an inflationary SGWB, focusing on the implications for the tensor spectral index nT and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r. Explaining NANOGrav while complying with upper limits on r from BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck requires $r \gtrsim {\cal O}(10^{-6})$ in conjunction ...

Consumers rely on the price changes of goods in their grocery bundles when forming expectations about aggregate inflation. We use micro data that uniquely match individual expectations, detailed information about consumption bundles, and item-level prices. The weights consumers assign to price changes depend on the frequency of purchase, rather than expenditure share, and positive price changes loom larger than negative price changes. Prices of goods offered in the same store but not purchased do not affect inflation expectations, nor do other dimensions. Our results provide empirical guidance...

Kirigami principles are exploited to design inflatables that can mimic target shapes upon pressurization and can selectively manipulate the parameters of the single units to allow the reproduction of features at different scales and ultimately enable a more accurate mimicking of the target.

Abstract Inflatable structures have become essential components in the design of soft robots and deployable systems as they enable dramatic shape change from a single pressure inlet. This simplicity, however, often brings a strict limitation: unimodal deformation upon inflation. Here, multistability is embraced to design modular, inflatable structures that can switch between distinct deformation modes as a response to a single input signal. This system comprises bistable origami modules in which pressure is used to trigger a snap‐through transition between a state of deformation characterized ...

Economy-wide emissions drop 43 to 48% below 2005 levels by 2035 with accelerated clean energy deployment.

Summary It has long been suspected, given the salience of gasoline prices, that fluctuations in gasoline prices shift households' 1‐year inflation expectations. Assessing this view empirically requires the use of dynamic structural models to quantify the cumulative effect of gasoline price shocks on household inflation expectations at each point in time. We find that, on average, gasoline price shocks account for 42% of the variation in these expectations. The cumulative increase in household inflation expectations from early 2009 to early 2013, in particular, is almost entirely explained by u...

Inspiration from origami is drawn to design rigid-walled deployable structures that are multistable and inflatable, providing a direct route for building large-scale inflatable systems that lock in place after deployment and offer a robust enclosure through their stiff faces.

It is shown that isocurvature fluctuations can mix with ζ inducing large enhancements of its amplitude, and that the large enhancements required for PBHs demand noncanonical kinetic terms in the action of the multifield system.

Global geopolitical risks have soared since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Investors, market participants, and policymakers expect that the war will exert a drag on the global economy while pushing up inflation, with a sharp increase in uncertainty and risks of severe adverse outcomes. As an example of these concerns, the April 2022 edition of the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook contains more than 200 mentions of the word "war."

This study reviews whether oil prices (OP) in Venezuela affect inflation (INF) in the presence of geopolitical risk (GPR). The country is exceedingly dependent on oil results in geopolitical destabilization and extremely exposed to OP shocks that contribute to higher inflation. The empirical results find comovement between OP and INF in short to medium run. However, GPR explains OP in the mid-term and its effect transmit to INF in the short run. Moreover, the correlation between OP and INF is identified in the long run and more evident in the presence of GPR, suggests that OP plays a crucial r...

This study focuses on spherical caps that exhibit isochoric snapping when pressurized under volume-controlled conditions and provides the foundation for the design of an emerging class of fluidic soft devices that can convert a slow input signal into a fast output deformation.

This paper introduces a global database that contains inflation series: (i) for a wide range of inflation measures (headline, food, energy, and core consumer price inflation; producer price inflation; and gross domestic product deflator changes); (ii) at multiple frequencies (monthly, quarterly and annual) for an extended period (1970–2023); and (iii) for a large number (up to 209) of countries. As it doubles the number of observations over the next-largest publicly available sources, the database constitutes a comprehensive, single source for inflation series. It also illustrates the potentia...

It is found that, contrary to early concerns that inflation would be spurred by overheated labor markets, most of the inflation surge that began in 2021 was the result of shocks to prices given wages.

Does inflation vary across the income distribution? This article reviews the growing literature on inflation inequality, describing recent advances and opportunities for further research in four areas. First, new price index theory facilitates the study of inflation inequality. Second, new data show that inflation rates decline with household income in the United States. Accurate measurement requires granular price and expenditure data because of aggregation bias. Third, new evidence quantifies the impacts of innovation and trade on inflation inequality. Contrary to common wisdom, empirical es...