We use novel survey data to study firms’ inventory contracts. We document facts about the usage of purchase and sale contracts. We find that firms purchase and sell inventory through three contractual arrangements: fixed price and quantity, fixed price only, and fixed quantity only. The former...

There is no consensus over the importance of “global forces” on inflation. This study explores the role of structural breaks in the inflation process, and their timing, whether it is common across countries, and the extent to which ‘global forces' are relevant. Three conclusions stand out....

This paper investigates how and to what extent nonlinearity, including the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate, affects the estimates of the natural rate of interest in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky prices and wages. We find that the estimated natural rate...

In this paper we investigate dynamics of global inflation and short-run inflation expectations. We estimate a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model estimated using Bayesian techniques. We then explore the effect of three source of inflationary pressure that could drive up inflation...

Inflation expectations play a key role in determining future economic outcomes. The associated uncertainty provides a direct gauge of how well-anchored the inflation expectations are. We construct a model-based measure of inflation expectations uncertainty by augmenting a standard unobserved...

Analysis of the Michigan Survey data confirms U.S. inflation expectations are not perfectly anchored in the event of an oil price shock. Two key results emerge through counterfactual analysis. First, better anchoring of inflation expectations can ameliorate the mild inflation impact which occurs...

This paper studies the joint dynamics of U.S. inflation and the average inflation predictions of the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) on a sample running from 1968Q4 to 2014Q2. The joint data generating process (DGP) of these data consists of the unobserved components (UC) model of Stock...

We study the distribution of equity returns in the G20 equity markets to test for contagion following the first official report of a COVID19 case in China in December 2019 and the subsequent announcement of a global pandemic in March 2020. We find evidence of contagion of Chinese equity market...

This paper employs a large BVAR model with common stochastic volatility to examine the effects of oil supply shocks, global oil demand shocks and precautionary oil shocks on 17 U.S. macroeconomic and financial market variables from 1986Q1 to 2019Q2. Generalized impulse response functions...

This paper studies the joint dynamics of real time U.S. inflation and the mean inflation predictions of the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) on a 1968Q4 to 2017Q2 sample. The joint data generating process (DGP) is an unobserved components (UC) model of inflation and a sticky information...