Using state-space modeling, we extract information from surveys of long-term inflation expectations and multiple quarterly inflation series to undertake a real-time decomposition of quarterly headline PCE and GDP-deflator inflation rates into a common long-term trend, common cyclical component,...

Trimmed-mean personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation does not clearly dominate PCE inflation excluding food and energy in real-time forecasting of headline PCE inflation. However, trimmed-mean inflation is the superior communications and policy tool because it has been a less-­biased...

We distinguish between three different ways of using real-time data to estimate forecasting equations and argue that the most popular approach should generally be avoided. The point is illustrated with a model that uses monthly industrial production, employment, and retail sales data to predict...