In this paper we estimate the value of the embedded option in U.S. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). The option value exhibits significant time variation that is correlated with periods of deflationary expectations. We use our estimated option values to construct an embedded option...

This paper examines a number of alternative PCE price inflation measures including overall PCE inflation, PCE inflation excluding food and energy, trimmed mean PCE inflation, component-smoothed inflation, variance-weighted inflation, inflation with weights based on disaggregated regressions, and...

Firmly-anchored inflation expectations are widely viewed as playing a central role in the successful conduct of monetary policy. This paper presents estimates of trend inflation, based on information contained in survey expectations, the term structure of interest rates, and realized inflation...

Is the observed correlation between current and lagged inflation a function of backward-looking inflation expectations, or do the lags in inflation regressions merely proxy for rational forward-looking expectations, as in the new-Keynesian Phillips curve? Recent research has attempted to answer...

Meyer (1999) has suggested that episodes of heightened uncertainty about the NAIRU may warrant a nonlinear policy response to changes in the unemployment rate. This paper offers a theoretical justification for such a nonlinear policy rule, and provides some empirical evidence on the relative...

In his 1999 monograph The Conquest of American Inflation Tom Sargent describes how a policymaker, who applies a constant-gain algorithm in estimating the Phillips curve, can fall into the grip of an induction problem: concluding on the basis of reduced-form evidence that the trade-off between...

The New Keynesian sticky-price model has become increasingly popular for monetary-policy analysis. However, there have been conflicting results on the empirical performance of the model. In this paper, I attempt to reconcile these conflicting claims by examining various specifications of the...

This paper examines the implications for monetary policy of sticky prices in both final and intermediate goods in a New Keynesian model. Both optimal policy under commitment and discretionary policy, which is the minimization of a simple loss function, are studied. Consumer utility losses under...

A central tenet of inflation targeting is that establishing and maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations are essential. In this paper, we reexamine the role of key elements of the inflation targeting framework towards this end, in the context of an economy where economic agents have an...