This paper investigates the use of trimmed means as high-frequency estimators of" inflation. The known characteristics … that simple averages of price data are" unlikely to produce efficient estimates of inflation. Trimmed means produce … superior estimates" of core inflation,' which we define as a long-run centered moving average of CPI and PPI" inflation. We …

In recent years, central bankers throughout the world have advocated that monetary policy shift toward inflation … targeting. Recent actions in the U.S. serve to highlight the desire of the Federal Reserve to keep inflation both low and stable …, while downplaying the likely output and employment consequences. But control of inflation requires both that one be able to …

a broad cross-section of countries inflation volatility has fallen markedly while output variability has either fallen … changes to these two factors. Our technique involves estimating movements toward an inflation and output variability …

The debate over including asset prices in the construction of an inflation statistic has attracted renewed attention in … inflation at the retail level. In this paper, we take an alternative, longer-term perspective on the issue and argue that the … exclusion of asset prices introduces an 'excluded goods bias' in the computation of the inflation statistic that is of interest …

monetary policymaking. First, we discuss why trimmed means provide the best measure of core inflation. Second, we outline how … rigidities impede policymakers' ability to control inflation. And third, we describe how alternative shock/rigidity combinations … create inflation's grease (whereby it improves economic efficiency by speeding adjustment) and sand effects (whereby it …

on correlations between inflation and its moments goesback over thirty years, and was first used to reject the … independence of relative price changes and inflation that is assumed in neo- classical models. More recently, New Keynesian … macroeconomists have shown that the strong positive correlation between inflation and the skewness of the price change distribution is …

As central bankers intensify their focus on inflation as the primary goal of monetary policy, it becomes increasingly … important to have accurate and reliable measures of changes in the aggregate price level. Measuring inflation is surprisingly … transitory noise and bias. Noise causes short-run changes in measured inflation to inaccurately reflect movements in long …