The ability of central banks to differentiate between permanent and transitory price movements is critical for the conduct of monetary policy. The importance of gauging the persistence of price changes in a timely manner has led to the development of measures of underlying, or “core,”...

Gross domestic product's high correlation with unemployment and inflation makes it a key measure of the U.S. economy. Yet the somewhat arbitrary nature of the GDP construction process complicates interpretation and measurement of the indicator. A study of an alternative measure of GDP designed...

Major U.S. economic data, most notably GDP and Industrial Production, are undergoing major changes. Proposals have been made for significant alterations in the CPI. The revision process has helped to spur debate on such topics as the proper method of accounting for high technology's role in the...

Business surveys often give early signals of the direction and magnitude of economic activity. One release, the relatively new Empire State Manufacturing Survey, is demonstrating an ability to provide information ahead of U.S. production and employment trends. In fact, the predictive power of...

The sharp divergence in the 2001 recession between two key economic indicators-manufacturing production and goods output-could suggest that one indicator is flawed, casting doubt on the reliability of its overall series. This analysis finds no evidence of error. Rather, the strength of spending...

Analysts seeking evidence of rising inflation often focus on the movements of a single indicator_an increase in the price of gold, for example, or a decline in the unemployment rate. But simple statistical tests reveal that such indicators, used in isolation, have very limited predictive power.

Despite posting their strongest sustained performance in many years, recent measures of output and productivity growth have still fallen short of their 1960-73 averages. Could data-measurement problems affecting the pricing of some services account for the inability of these widely tracked U.S....