Posted

April 21, 2012 01:52:36 AM

Date

2012-01

Author

Robert G. King and Mark W. Watson

Affiliation

Boston University and Princeton University)

Title

Inflation and Unit Labor Cost

Summary /
Abstract

We study two decompositions of inflation, , motivated by a New Keynesian Pricing Equation. The first uses four components: lagged , expected future , real unit labor cost ( ), and a residual. The second uses two components: fundamental inflation (discounted expected future ) and a residual. We find large low-frequency differences between actual and fundamental inflation. From 1999-2011 fundamental inflation fell by more than 15 percentage points, while actual inflation changed little. We discuss this discrepancy in terms of the data (a large drop in labor's share of income) and through the lens of a canonical structural model (Smets-Wouters (2007)).

Keywords

Inflation targeting, inflation forecasts, inflation forecasts targeting, inflation expectations, labor cost, DSGE models

URL

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2012-005&r=cba

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