Monetary policymakers and long-term investors would benefit greatly from a measure of underlying inflation that uses all relevant information, is available in real time, and forecasts inflation better than traditional underlying inflation measures such as core inflation measures. This paper...

Inflation in China is driven by volatile yet persistent changes in food and energy prices, making it difficult for policymakers and investors to gauge the underlying inflation trend. Traditional core inflation measures either neglect or down-weight the more volatile subcomponents of the CPI and...

Empirical evidence following conventional tests suggests that inflation expectations in Colombia might not be rational, although the period of disinflation included in the sample makes it difficult to verify this conclusion. Inflation expectations display close ties with observed past and...

The headline consumer price index (CPI) is often considered too noisy, narrowly defined, and/or slowly available for policymaking. On the other hand, traditional core inflation measures may reduce volatility but do not address other issues and may even exclude important information. This paper...

In May 2007, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas hosted a conference, organized with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, titled "Price Measurement for Monetary Policy." The conference broadly focused on two issues - the measurement of core inflation and the measurement of inflation...

The Consumer Price Index is a Laspeyres index which uses a plutocratic method. This paper has three purposes. The first purpose is to assemble a democratic CPI. The second purpose is to construct an alternative one using the median of the expenditure distribution. The third purpose is to compile...