U.S. inflation data exhibit two notable spikes into the double-digit range in 1973-1974 and again in 1978-1980. The well-known "supply-shock" explanation attributes both spikes to large food and energy shocks plus, in the case of 1973-1974, the removal of price controls. Yet critics of this...

Central banks are increasingly reaching out to the general public to motivate and explain their monetary policy actions. One major aim of this outreach is to guide inflation expectations; another is to ensure accountability and create trust. This article surveys a rapidly-growing literature on...

There is an uncomfortably large gulf between academic research and what policy economists use to understand the economy. A Practical Guide to Macroeconomics shows how economists at policy institutions approach important real-world questions and explains why existing academic work - theoretical...

A new-Keynesian model with a nominal tax system is developed and used to study the macroeconomic effects of temporary tax-based investment incentives. Two claims regarding the effects of these incentives are examined: first that they are overstated in partial-equilibrium frameworks; and second...

We survey the evidence on CPI bias and provide our best estimate of its magnitude. We also identify a "weighting" bias that has not been quantified previously. We estimate that the CPI currently overstates the rate of change in the cost of living by about 0.9 percentage point per year, with a...