In this paper, we reevaluate the evidence of seasonality in prices which we find to be substantially greater than previous research has indicated. That is, seasonal price movements have become more prominent in the relatively stable inflation environment that has prevailed since 1982. One main...

The purpose of this paper is to answer the three questions in the title. Using a large monthly survey of businesses, we investigate the inflation expectations and uncertainties of firms. We document that, in the aggregate, firm inflation expectations are very similar to the predictions of...

This paper investigates the use of trimmed means as high-frequency estimators of" inflation. The known characteristics of price change distributions, specifically the observation" that they generally exhibit high levels of kurtosis, imply that simple averages of price data are" unlikely to...

As inflation approaches zero, it becomes increasingly important to examine the price indices on which monetary policy is based. The most popularly used aggregate price statistic in the U.S. is the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a statistic that appears to be a focal point in monetary policy...

The debate over including asset prices in the construction of an inflation statistic has attracted renewed attention in recent years. Virtually all of this (and earlier) work on incorporating asset prices into an aggregate price statistic has been motivated by a presumed, but unidentified...