The 12-month change in core PCE price inflation was 1.5 percent in December. Why was core inflation so low in 2020? How much of this weakness can be attributed to the COVID pandemic? And what does this mean for inflation going forward?

The goal of this note is to provide an assessment of two of the most commonly used indicators of core inflation: the PCE price index excluding food and energy (an exclusion index), and the Dallas Fed trimmed mean PCE price index (a central-tendency statistical measure)

Quantifying the magnitude and establishing the timing of the pass-through of oil price changes to consumer prices is crucial for forecasting inflation. Characterizing this pass-through is particularly important because oil prices tend to undergo wide fluctuations