Inflation and prices

• Targeting Inflation from Below - How Do Inflation Expectations Behave?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-52 Michael Ehrmann

  Inflation targeting (IT) had originally been introduced as a device to bring inflation down and stabilize it at low levels. Given the current environment of persistently weak inflation in many advanced economies, IT central banks must now bring inflation up to target.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Inflation targets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58
• November 13, 2014

  Recent Developments in Experimental Macroeconomics

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2014 Robert Amano, Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Luba Petersen

  This article describes experimental economics, in general, and new developments in experimental macroeconomics, in particular. The approach has a clear niche in providing evidence on economic phenomena that cannot be observed directly or that are difficult to measure. Experimental work conducted by Bank of Canada economists has shed light on a number of issues important to monetary policy, such as the relative efficacy between price-level and inflation targeting, and the nature of inflation expectations formation.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): C, C9, E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility

  Staff Working Paper 2014-45 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Nicolas Vincent

  Macroeconomists have traditionally ignored the behavior of temporary price markdowns (“sales”) by retailers. Although sales are common in the micro price data, they are assumed to be unrelated to macroeconomic phenomena and generally filtered out.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52, L, L1, L11, L2, L25, L8, L81, M, M3, M31

• Real-Time Nowcasting of Nominal GDP Under Structural Breaks

  Staff Working Paper 2014-39 William A. Barnett, Marcelle Chauvet, Danilo Leiva-Leon

  This paper provides a framework for the early assessment of current U.S. nominal GDP growth, which has been considered a potential new monetary policy target. The nowcasts are computed using the exact amount of information that policy-makers have available at the time predictions are made. However, real-time information arrives at different frequencies and asynchronously, which poses challenges of mixed frequencies, missing data and ragged edges.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E2, E27, E3, E31, E32

• Global Inflation Dynamics in the Post-Crisis Period: What Explains the Twin Puzzle?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-36 Christian Friedrich

  Inflation dynamics in advanced countries have produced two consecutive puzzles during the years after the global financial crisis. The first puzzle emerged when inflation rates over the period 2009-11 were consistently higher than expected, although economic slack in advanced countries reached its highest level in recent history.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, F, F4, F41

• Consumer Attitudes and the Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations

  Staff Working Paper 2014-28 Michael Ehrmann, Damjan Pfajfar, Emiliano Santoro

  This paper studies the formation of consumers’ inflation expectations using micro-level data from the Michigan Survey. It shows that beyond the well-established socio-economic determinants of inflation expectations such as gender, income or education, other characteristics such as the households’ financial situation and their purchasing attitudes also matter.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, D, D8, D84, E, E3, E31