This paper surveys the literature since 1993 on pseudo out-of-sample evaluation of inflation forecasts in the United States and conducts an extensive empirical analysis that recapitulates and clarifies this literature using a consistent data set and methodology. The literature review and...

Hysteresis is central to long-run unemployment movements in many countries. This essay addresses two broad issues. The first is whether there is clear evidence of hysteresis effects. To put it differently, can we reject the hypothesis that the NAIRU, and hence the long run behavior of...

Paul Samuelson could not attend, yet he kindly forwarded commentary for distribution at the conference.

The author's comments focus on how the lessons from recent research on the Phillips curve are helping him think about the influence of fluctuations in the prices of commodities, such as oil, on the outlook for inflation and the appropriate policy responses to such developments.

It has been fifty years since A.W. Phillips published the famous article on inflation and unemployment that established the Phillips curve as a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. Today, despite ongoing debate about the validity of this approach, many academic economists,...

As with many important theories, the long run value of Phillips curve theories may lie in the new flames that are emerging from its dying embers.

Historical experience suggests an important role for some deviation from the most restricted form of rational expectations in inflation dynamics, but also shows that other aspects of sluggish price adjustment – such as nominal rigidities, are important; and the available indicators of...

The author discusses: the challenges the wealth of micro-data has posed to macroeconomists and some of the progress made to address these; the fact that an important number of price changes in the data are temporary discounts (sales); and the complicated mapping from the frequency of price...

In order to avoid writing a comment that may turn out to be irrelevant the author has therefore decided to comment less directly on what Bill says, and focus instead on the problem that Bill has posed and discuss some thoughts on how to go about modeling it.

NAIRU estimates are obtained from estimates of the Phillips curve – the relationship between the inflation rate on the one hand, and the unemployment rate, measures of inflationary expectations and variables representing supply shocks on the other.