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...

Economists have been arguing about the connection between unemployment and infl ation for decades. Critics claim that the connection is unreliable and leads policymakers astray, while others argue that the relationship is useful for forecasting. We examine the more direct connections between...

We study discretionary equilibrium in the Calvo pricing model for a monetary authority that chooses the money supply. The steady-state inflation rate is above 8 percent for a baseline calibration, but it varies substantially with alternative structural parameter values. If the initial condition...

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...