Using quarterly macro data and annual state panel data, we examine various explanations of the low rate of price inflation, strong real wage growth, and low rate of unemployment in the U.S. economy during the late 1990s. Many of these explanations imply shifts in the coefficients of price and...

A growing theoretical literature argues that aggregate price flexibility and the inflation-output tradeoff faced by central banks should rise with microeconomic price change dispersion. However, there is little empirical work testing this prediction. I fill this gap by estimating time-varying...

We use an agent-based computational approach to show how inflation can worsen macroeconomic performance by disrupting the mechanism of exchange in a decentralized market economy. We find that increasing the trend rate of inflation above 3 percent has a substantial deleterious effect, but...

Is monetary policy less effective at increasing real output during periods of high volatility than during normal times? In this paper, I argue that greater volatility leads to an increase in aggregate price flexibility so that nominal stimulus mostly generates inflation rather than output...

During the course of 1999 Q4, the price trend changed. The long-term tendency toward a slowdown in CPI inflation was replaced by a slight pickup. Year-on-year CPI inflation was 2.5% in December ?99. The net inflation index stood at 1.5%, i.e., 2.5 percentage points below the lower boundary of...

Q1 2000 saw moderate inflation, signs of economic recovery, a worsening of the trade balance, and the continuing appreciation of the koruna?s exchange rate against the euro. Inflation factors acted markedly differently than in 1998 and H1 1999, when the price trend had been affected by a...

The moderate increase in inflation during Q2 2000 resulted from both an increase in net inflation and a hike in several regulated prices. Rising energy and raw material prices influenced the development of industrial PPI but their impact on CPI (except for fuel prices) continued to be limited,...

The decline in year-on-year inflation was halted in Q3 1999. After a considerable drop in the previous period, inflation gradually stabilised at its lowest level since 1991, the beginning of the country?s economic transformation. Net inflation continued to be determined largely by food prices....

This paper investigates the sources of the widely noticed reduction in the volatility of American business cycles since the mid 1980s. Our analysis of reduced volatility emphasizes the sharp decline in the standard deviation of changes in real GDP, of the output gap, and of the inflation rate....

This paper first outlines the key stylized facts about changes in inflation dynamics in recent years: 1) inflation persistence has declined, 2) the Phillips curve has flattened, and 3) inflation has become less responsive to other shocks. These changes in inflation dynamics are interpreted as...