In the financial press, productivity-related wages are often cited as an inflation indicator. For example, recently slow rates of wage growth have been noted as a factor that will keep inflation rates low in the future. While inflation and wage growth do appear to be highly correlated over...

Recent developments in measuring the stance of monetary policy have highlighted an interesting puzzle--namely, that an unexpected tightening in monetary policy leads to an increase rather than a decrease in the price level. In this article, Nathan Balke and Kenneth Emery present evidence on the...

Many policymakers and financial market participants use the Federal Reserve's industrial capacity utilization rate as an indicator of future changes in inflation. During the past few years, however, the usefulness of the utilization rate as an inflation indicator has come under scrutiny. ; In...

Accurate forecasts of inflation are important to policymakers and to individuals who must make decisions on the basis of expectations about the future purchasing power of the dollar. ; Recent research on forecasting inflation has shown that interest rates, by themselves, may provide useful...