On the Fragility of the Nonlinear Phillips Curve View of Recent Inflation

The paper examines whether the US evidence in favour of a nonlinearity in the Phillips curve is robust or fragile. To this end, we use both cross city and aggregate time series data. We are particularly concerned with the possibility that the evidence in favour a nonlinear Phillips curve may is fact be driven by improperly controlling for inflation expectations. Our finding suggest that the evidence in support of a nonlinear Phillips curve is very fragile