To accurately forecast the future rate of inflation, it is imperative to account for inflation’s underlying trend. This is especially important for medium- to long-run forecasts. In this Commentary I demonstrate a simple but powerful technique for incorporating this trend into standard...

In the face of falling house prices, decreasing rates of homeownership, and a glut of vacant homes, the Consumer Price Index’s measure of the cost of owner-occupied housing—owners’ equivalent rent of residence (OER)—has begun to accelerate, rising at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent...

An estimation of a price index that is immune to some of the weighting biases that can hinder the use of the Consumer Price Index as a reliable measure of inflation.

Deregulation of electricity generation will offer consumers many advantages, including dramatically lower energy costs. From a macroeconomic viewpoint, electricity purchases are interesting because they are a major component of consumers’ budgets (and thus of the CPI) and a large factor of...

An examination of the impact of inflation and unemployment on poverty, using a poverty rate based on goods and services consumed, rather than on income. The findings suggest that inflation may harm the poor more than was previously thought.

At a time when past rules of thumb seem inadequate, the author briefly reviews the connection between money and prices.

A discussion of six papers presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's Conference on Price Stability in November 1990, focusing on how recent developments in macroeconomic research have changed perceptions about optimal inflation policy.

An argument that attempting to alleviate the burden of unemployment on the less affluent through expansionary monetary policy may hurt the clientele it is supposed to serve if, ultimately, the policy leads to higher long-run rates of inflation.

Maintaining stables prices and keeping inflation in check have become key policy objectives of the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Evidence indicates that inflation has become less persistent and volatile since the early 1980s. Although economists have examined the implications for...