Misspecification, Identification or Measurement? Another Look at the Price Puzzle

This paper re-examines the VAR analysis of the price puzzle with regard to the issues of measurement, identification and misspecification. In an empirical analysis conducted for the US economy, we consider alternative measures of economic activity and inflation, alternative assumptions to identify the monetary policy shock and various VAR specifications making use of contemporaneous and forward looking variables. All three issues are found to be important for the resolution of the price puzzle and a robust preferred specification is proposed.