Although the target of monetary policy is clear, there have been suggestions that the conduct of monetary policy is improved by monitoring "trimmed mean" inflation rates, the mean of some central portion of the distribution of price changes. This paper assesses critically the theoretical and...

The Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) assumes that individuals base their decisions on lifetime wealth, not current income. Textbook versions of the PIH predict that the elasticity of consumption with respect to human wealth is equal to the share of human wealth in total wealth. Comparing...