IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scandj/v125y2023i1p287-314.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is the US Phillips curve stable? Evidence from Bayesian vector autoregressions

Author

Listed:
  • Sune Karlsson
  • Pär Österholm

Abstract

It has been claimed that the fall in US inflation during the Great Recession was surprisingly small. One possible explanation for this is that the Phillips curve is unstable and that its slope was lower around the Great Recession. We investigate the importance of time‐varying parameters using Bayesian vector autoregressions for inflation and unemployment. We find support for time variation in the inflation equation and an unstable Phillips curve that was somewhat flatter between 2005 and 2013. However, conditional forecasts mostly suggest that inflation was not unexpectedly high around the Great Recession, which puts the claim of a “missing disinflation” into question.

Suggested Citation

  • Sune Karlsson & Pär Österholm, 2023. "Is the US Phillips curve stable? Evidence from Bayesian vector autoregressions," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(1), pages 287-314, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:125:y:2023:i:1:p:287-314
    DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12508
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12508
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/sjoe.12508?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marco Gallegati & Mauro Gallegati & James Bernard Ramsey & Willi Semmler, 2011. "The US Wage Phillips Curve across Frequencies and over Time," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 73(4), pages 489-508, August.
    2. Kuttner, Ken & Robinson, Tim, 2010. "Understanding the flattening Phillips curve," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 110-125, August.
    3. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2005. "Drift and Volatilities: Monetary Policies and Outcomes in the Post WWII U.S," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(2), pages 262-302, April.
    4. Michael Dotsey & Shigeru Fujita & Tom Stark, 2018. "Do Phillips Curves Conditionally Help to Forecast Inflation?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(4), pages 43-92, September.
    5. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "Inflation dynamics: A structural econometric analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 195-222, October.
    6. Hamilton, James D & Herrera, Ana Maria, 2004. "Oil Shocks and Aggregate Macroeconomic Behavior: The Role of Monetary Policy: Comment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 265-286, April.
    7. Joshua C. C. Chan & Gary Koop & Simon M. Potter, 2016. "A Bounded Model of Time Variation in Trend Inflation, Nairu and the Phillips Curve," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 551-565, April.
    8. Leeper, Eric M. & Zha, Tao, 2003. "Modest policy interventions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(8), pages 1673-1700, November.
    9. Clark, Todd E. & Doh, Taeyoung, 2014. "Evaluating alternative models of trend inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 426-448.
    10. Jesper Lindé, 2018. "DSGE models: still useful in policy analysis?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 34(1-2), pages 269-286.
    11. Alexius, Annika & Lundholm, Michael & Nielsen, Linnea, 2020. "Is the Phillips curve dead? International evidence," Research Papers in Economics 2020:1, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    12. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2006. "The Predictive Content of the Output Gap for Inflation: Resolving In-Sample and Out-of-Sample Evidence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(5), pages 1127-1148, August.
    13. Edward S. Knotek & Saeed Zaman, 2017. "Have Inflation Dynamics Changed?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue November.
    14. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Is the Phillips Curve Alive and Well after All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 197-232, January.
    15. Goodfriend, Marvin & King, Robert G., 2005. "The incredible Volcker disinflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 981-1015, July.
    16. Koop, Gary & Leon-Gonzalez, Roberto & Strachan, Rodney W., 2009. "On the evolution of the monetary policy transmission mechanism," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 997-1017, April.
    17. Laurence Ball & Sandeep Mazumder, 2011. "Inflation Dynamics and the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(1 (Spring), pages 337-405.
    18. Blanchard, Oliver & Cerutti, Eugenio & SUmmers, Lawrence, 2015. "Inflation and Activity - Two Explorations and Their Monetary Policy Implications," Working Paper Series 15-070, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    19. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Forecasting inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-335, October.
    20. Barnett, Alina & Mumtaz, Haroon & Theodoridis, Konstantinos, 2014. "Forecasting UK GDP growth and inflation under structural change. A comparison of models with time-varying parameters," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 129-143.
    21. Galí, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "Inflation Dynamics: A Structural Economic Analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 2246, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    22. Daniel F. Waggoner & Tao Zha, 1999. "Conditional Forecasts In Dynamic Multivariate Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 639-651, November.
    23. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    24. Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele & Momferatou, Daphne & Onorante, Luca, 2014. "Short-term inflation projections: A Bayesian vector autoregressive approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 635-644.
    25. Kozicki, Sharon & Tinsley, P.A., 2005. "Permanent and transitory policy shocks in an empirical macro model with asymmetric information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1985-2015, November.
    26. Harding, Martín & Lindé, Jesper & Trabandt, Mathias, 2022. "Resolving the missing deflation puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 15-34.
    27. Olivier Blanchard, 2016. "The Phillips Curve: Back to the '60s?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 31-34, May.
    28. Michal Franta & Roman Horvath & Marek Rusnak, 2014. "Evaluating changes in the monetary transmission mechanism in the Czech Republic," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 827-842, May.
    29. Meredith Beechey & Pär Österholm, 2012. "The Rise and Fall of U.S. Inflation Persistence," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 8(3), pages 55-86, September.
    30. Sune Karlsson & Pär Österholm, 2020. "A note on the stability of the Swedish Phillips curve," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 2573-2612, December.
    31. Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2005. "Time Varying Structural Vector Autoregressions and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 821-852.
    32. Pär Österholm, 2009. "Incorporating Judgement in Fan Charts," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(2), pages 387-415, June.
    33. Antonello D'Agostino & Luca Gambetti & Domenico Giannone, 2013. "Macroeconomic forecasting and structural change," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 82-101, January.
    34. Berger, Tino & Everaert, Gerdie & Vierke, Hauke, 2016. "Testing for time variation in an unobserved components model for the U.S. economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 179-208.
    35. Lars E. O. Svensson, 2015. "The Possible Unemployment Cost of Average Inflation below a Credible Target," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 258-296, January.
    36. Jane Ihrig & Steven B. Kamin & Deborah Lindner & Jaime Marquez, 2010. "Some Simple Tests of the Globalization and Inflation Hypothesis," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 343-375, December.
    37. Stefan Laseen & Marzie Taheri Sanjani, 2016. "Did the Global Financial Crisis Break the U.S. Phillips Curve?," IMF Working Papers 2016/126, International Monetary Fund.
    38. Christopher A. Sims, 1982. "Policy Analysis with Econometric Models," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 13(1), pages 107-164.
    39. Mark W. Watson, 2014. "Inflation Persistence, the NAIRU, and the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 31-36, May.
    40. Mattias Villani, 2009. "Steady-state priors for vector autoregressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(4), pages 630-650.
    41. Francesco Bianchi & Andrea Civelli, 2015. "Globalization and Inflation: Evidence from a Time Varying VAR," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 406-433, April.
    42. Laurence M. Ball, 2006. "Has Globalization Changed Inflation?," NBER Working Papers 12687, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    43. Robert J. Gordon, 2013. "The Phillips Curve is Alive and Well: Inflation and the NAIRU During the Slow Recovery," NBER Working Papers 19390, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    44. Todd E. Clark, 2014. "The Importance of Trend Inflation in the Search for Missing Disinflation," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Aug.
    45. Timothy Cogley & Argia M. Sbordone, 2008. "Trend Inflation, Indexation, and Inflation Persistence in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2101-2126, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kuo-Hsuan Chin & Xin-Hua Zheng, 2024. "Stability of Phillips Curve: The case of Taiwan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 44(2), pages 635-651.
    2. Beechey, Meredith & Österholm, Pär & Poon, Aubrey, 2023. "Estimating the US trend short-term interest rate," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karlsson, Sune & Österholm, Pär, 2018. "Is the US Phillips Curve Stable? Evidence from Bayesian VARs," Working Papers 2018:5, Örebro University, School of Business.
    2. Sune Karlsson & Pär Österholm, 2020. "A note on the stability of the Swedish Phillips curve," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 2573-2612, December.
    3. Bańbura, Marta & Bobeica, Elena, 2023. "Does the Phillips curve help to forecast euro area inflation?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 364-390.
    4. Dennis Bonam & Gabriele Galati & Irma Hindrayanto & Marco Hoeberichts & Anna Samarina & Irina Stanga, 2019. "Inflation in the euro area since the Global Financial Crisis," DNB Occasional Studies 1703, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    5. Aguiar-Conraria, Luís & Martins, Manuel M.F. & Soares, Maria Joana, 2023. "The Phillips curve at 65: Time for time and frequency," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    6. Philipp F. M. Baumann & Enzo Rossi & Alexander Volkmann, 2020. "What Drives Inflation and How: Evidence from Additive Mixed Models Selected by cAIC," Papers 2006.06274, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    7. Philippe Goulet Coulombe, 2022. "A Neural Phillips Curve and a Deep Output Gap," Papers 2202.04146, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    8. Michael McLeay & Silvana Tenreyro, 2020. "Optimal Inflation and the Identification of the Phillips Curve," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 199-255.
    9. Philippe Goulet Coulombe, 2022. "A Neural Phillips Curve and a Deep Output Gap," Working Papers 22-01, Chair in macroeconomics and forecasting, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management.
    10. Marco Del Negro & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2020. "What's Up with the Phillips Curve?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(1 (Spring), pages 301-373.
    11. Hauzenberger, Niko, 2021. "Flexible Mixture Priors for Large Time-varying Parameter Models," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 87-108.
    12. McKnight, Stephen & Mihailov, Alexander & Rumler, Fabio, 2020. "Inflation forecasting using the New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a time-varying trend," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 383-393.
    13. Conti, Antonio M., 2021. "Resurrecting the Phillips Curve in Low-Inflation Times," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 172-195.
    14. Baxa Jaromír & Plašil Miroslav & Vašíček Bořek, 2017. "Inflation and the steeplechase between economic activity variables: evidence for G7 countries," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-42, January.
    15. Franz Xaver Zobl & Martin Ertl, 2021. "The Condemned Live Longer – New Evidence of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve in Central and Eastern Europe," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 671-699, September.
    16. Niko Hauzenberger, 2020. "Flexible Mixture Priors for Large Time-varying Parameter Models," Papers 2006.10088, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2020.
    17. Fu, Bowen, 2020. "Is the slope of the Phillips curve time-varying? Evidence from unobserved components models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 320-340.
    18. Szafranek, Karol, 2017. "Flattening of the New Keynesian Phillips curve: Evidence for an emerging, small open economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 334-348.
    19. D'Agostino, Antonello & Mendicino, Caterina, 2014. "Expectation-Driven Cycles: Time-varying Effects," MPRA Paper 53607, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Combes, Jean-Louis & Lesuisse, Pierre, 2022. "Inflation and unemployment, new insights during the EMU accession," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 124-142.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:125:y:2023:i:1:p:287-314. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9442 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.