The US Phillips Curve and inflation expectations: A State Space Markov-Switching explanatory model

This paper proposes a new empirical representation of US inflation expectations in a Stace-Space Markov-Switching framework in order to identify the expectations regimes which are associated with short and long term Phillips curves. We explicitly identify the dynamic of inflation expectation errors using the expectations augmented Markov-switching Phillips curve as a measurement equation. In this paper we consider expected inflation as an underlying component of observed inflation. We thus use the same type of specification (occasionally integrated) to describe its dynamic. We have found that dynamics of inflation expectation errors change across regimes. For the last 20 years we show the Phillips curve is vertical and associated with rational inflation expectations. Whereas for the period of economic instability (1973-1983) a negative Phillips curve is associated with adaptive expectations