One of the dangers of high inflation is that it can cause firms and households to pay close attention to it. This internalization of inflation can lead to an accelerationist regime, making inflation harder to control. We empirically assess the relationship between attention and the level of...

One of the dangers of high inflation is that it can cause firms and households to pay close attention to it. This internalization of inflation can lead to an accelerationist regime, making inflation harder to control. We empirically assess the relationship between attention and the level of...

Prior research has documented that attention to inflation shifts when inflation surpasses a 3-4% threshold. In this note we examine how attention to inflation declines in episodes of disinflation. We show that for countries where inflation has returned to "normal" (pre-threshold) levels,...

The demographic metrics and inflationary circumstances that framed the January 2011 revolution in Egypt’s Tahrir Square were almost identical to those prevailing in Japan during their violent 1968 student-led revolts, in the United States when millions demonstrated against the Vietnam War in...

Using newly digitized unemployment insurance claims data we construct a historical monthly unemployment series for U.S. states going back to January 1947. The constructed series are highly correlated with the Bureau of Labor Statics' state-level unemployment data, which are only available from...

Dispersion in firm-level growth rates rises during recessions. To date, this has been explained through mechanisms on the firms’ side of the economy. In this paper I show that countercyclical dispersion can arise from changes on the demand side of the economy. Using retail data I find that...