On 1 October 2011 the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) substantially reduced the pension entitlements of its members. The most onerous of the changes is the cap placed on the indexation of pensions where in the event of high inflation the cap will quickly lower the real value of the...

Whether or not macroeconomics is a science depends on the scientific nature of macroeconomic theories and how the discipline responds when the empirical evidence fails to match the underlying assumptions and predictions of the theories. By way of an example, four conditions for macroeconomics to...

United States Phillips curves are routinely estimated without accounting for the shifts in mean inflation. As a result we may expect the standard estimates of Phillips curves to be biased and suffer from ARCH. We demonstrate this is indeed the case. We also demonstrate that once the shifts in...

Phillips curves are often estimated without due attention to the underlying time series properties of the data. In particular, the consequences of inflation having discrete breaks in mean have not been studied adequately. We show by means of simulations and a detailed empirical example based on...

An I(2) analysis of inflation and the markup is undertaken for the G7 economies and Australia. We find that the levels of prices and costs are best described as I(2) processes and that except for Japan a linear combination of the log levels of prices and costs cointegrate to the markup that is...