There is a substantial correlation between household debt and health. Individuals with less healthy lifestyles are more likely to hold debt, yet there is little evidence as to whether this is merely a correlation or if financial hardship actually causes obesity. In this paper, we use data from...

This paper investigates the cross-sectional distribution of inflation forecasts errors over the period 1984–2007. Our working hypothesis is that the Fed's movement toward greater transparency starting in the mid-1990s likely affected both the distribution of forecast errors and the location of...

This paper presents evidence on the persistence of inflation in the United States over the period 1947- 2010. Of particular interest is whether the persistence of inflation has changed over that time period. We use a reduced form approach to measuring inflation persistence, modeling inflation as...

Previous research comparing the Fed's Greenbook forecasts with a median forecast from a private-sector panel has found that the Fed's forecasts are superior. These comparisons potentially miss information from other parts of the distribution of forecast errors. We compare the Fed's forecast...

This paper uses the forecast from a random walk model of inflation as a benchmark to test and compare the forecast performance of several alternatives of future inflation, including the Greenbook forecast by the Fed staff, the Survey of Professional Forecasters median forecast, CPI inflation...

This paper investigates the change in private-sector and Federal Reserve forecasts before and after the Great Moderation. We view the Great Moderation as a natural experiment. Using forecasts produced by the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Federal Reserve (Greenbook forecasts) we...

We examine the relative improvement in forecasting accuracy of the Federal Reserve (Greenbook forecasts) and private-sector forecasts (the Survey of Professional Forecasters and Blue Chip Economic Indicators)for inflation. Previous research by Romer and Romer [Romer, Christina, David, Romer,...

We examine the relative improvement in forecasting accuracy of the Federal Reserve (Greenbook forecasts) and private-sector forecasts (the Survey of Professional Forecasters and Blue Chip Economic Indicators) for inflation. Previous research by Romer and Romer (2000), and Sims (2002) shows that...

This paper investigates the change in private sector and Federal Reserve forecasts before and during the Great Moderation. We view the Great Moderation as a natural experiment. Using forecasts produced by the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Federal Reserve (Greenbook forecasts) we...

This paper investigates the forecasting accuracy of the trimmed mean inflation rate of the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) deflator. Earlier works have examined the forecasting ability of limited-influence estimators (trimmed means and the weighted median) of the Consumer Price Index but...