{"title":"Inflation: What we have learned and what we need to know","authors":"Jan Hatzius","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103656","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We discuss the lessons that economic forecasters have learned about inflation since the Covid shock. First, physical shortages—e.g., in the auto sector—can push up goods prices much more dramatically than most forecasters expected following several decades near price stability. Second, imbalances in the rental housing market can sharply increase inflation and keep it high, especially in economies such as the US where rents are used to impute owner-occupied housing costs. Third, the jobs-workers gap can be a better measure of labor market balance than the unemployment rate or the employment/population ratio.</div><div>Originally prepared for the Spring 2024 NBER conference on “Inflation in the Covid era and beyond”.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"148 ","pages":"Article 103656"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Monetary Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393224001090","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We discuss the lessons that economic forecasters have learned about inflation since the Covid shock. First, physical shortages—e.g., in the auto sector—can push up goods prices much more dramatically than most forecasters expected following several decades near price stability. Second, imbalances in the rental housing market can sharply increase inflation and keep it high, especially in economies such as the US where rents are used to impute owner-occupied housing costs. Third, the jobs-workers gap can be a better measure of labor market balance than the unemployment rate or the employment/population ratio.
Originally prepared for the Spring 2024 NBER conference on “Inflation in the Covid era and beyond”.
期刊介绍:
The profession has witnessed over the past twenty years a remarkable expansion of research activities bearing on problems in the broader field of monetary economics. The strong interest in monetary analysis has been increasingly matched in recent years by the growing attention to the working and structure of financial institutions. The role of various institutional arrangements, the consequences of specific changes in banking structure and the welfare aspects of structural policies have attracted an increasing interest in the profession. There has also been a growing attention to the operation of credit markets and to various aspects in the behavior of rates of return on assets. The Journal of Monetary Economics provides a specialized forum for the publication of this research.