IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pcp/pucrev/y2022i89p52-72.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Low Inflation Bends the Phillips Curve around the World

Author

Listed:
  • Kristin J. Forbes

    (MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA)

  • Joseph E. Gagnon

    (Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC)

  • Christopher G. Collins

    (Morgan Stanley, New York, NY)

Abstract

This paper finds strong support for a Phillips curve that becomes nonlinear when inflation is“low”—which our baseline model defines as less than 3 percent. The nonlinear curve is steep when output is above potential (slack is negative) but flat when output is below potential (slack is positive) so that further increases in economic slack have little effect on inflation. This finding is consistent with evidence of downward nominal wage and price rigidity. When inflation is high, the Phillips curve is linear and relatively steep. These results are robust to placing the threshold between the high and low inflation regimes at 2, 3, or 4 percent inflation or for a threshold based on country-specific medians of inflation. In this nonlinear model, international factors play a large role in explaining headline inflation (albeit less so for core inflation), a role that has been increasing since the global financial crisis. These results provide evidence of channels which could boost inflation in the future, even if they were dormant before the Covid pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristin J. Forbes & Joseph E. Gagnon & Christopher G. Collins, 2022. "Low Inflation Bends the Phillips Curve around the World," Revista Economía, Fondo Editorial - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, vol. 45(89), pages 52-72.
    • Handle: RePEc:pcp:pucrev:y:2022:i:89:p:52-72
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/economia/article/view/25648/24151
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriel, Ricardo Duque, 2023. "Monetary policy and the wage inflation-unemployment tradeoff," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    2. Randal Verbrugge & Saeed Zaman, 2024. "Post‐COVID inflation dynamics: Higher for longer," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(4), pages 871-893, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    E31; E37; E52; E58; F62;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F62 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Macroeconomic Impacts

    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:pcp:pucrev:y:2022:i:89:p:52-72. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/depucpe.html .

    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.