IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-02464147.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation, uncertainty and labor market conditions in the US

Author

Listed:
  • Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu

    (CRIEF [Poitiers] - Centre de recherche sur l'intégration économique et financière - UP - Université de Poitiers = University of Poitiers)

  • Cornel Oros

    (CRIEF [Poitiers] - Centre de recherche sur l'intégration économique et financière - UP - Université de Poitiers = University of Poitiers)

Abstract

Recent inflation dynamics in the United States (US) questioned the role of driving forces of inflation in the long run. Although the US recorded one of the longest economic recovery periods and the labor market conditions improved after the Global crisis, the inflation level remained relatively low. Starting from this evidence, the purpose of our paper is to shed light to the influence of inflation uncertainty and labor market conditions on the US inflation level. To this end, we first use two bounded measures of inflation uncertainty, relying on Chan et al.'s (2013) and Chan's (2017) unobserved component models. Second, we compare a linear with an asymmetric Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) framework. We show that both inflation uncertainty and labor market conditions explain the long-run US inflation. However, these results are sensitive to the way the inflation uncertainty is computed. Moreover, contrary to the recent affirmations regarding the vanishing role of labor market in explaining the US inflation in the long run, we show that the labor market influence is stronger in the post-crisis, compared with the pre-crisis period. Therefore, the monetary policymakers cannot make abstraction of labor market developments in anticipating the US inflation level.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu & Cornel Oros, 2020. "Inflation, uncertainty and labor market conditions in the US," Working Papers hal-02464147, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02464147
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02464147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-02464147/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Berument, Hakan & Yalcin, Yeliz & Yildirim, Julide, 2009. "The effect of inflation uncertainty on inflation: Stochastic volatility in mean model within a dynamic framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1201-1207, November.
    2. Claudiu T. Albulescu & Aviral Kumar Twari & Stephen M. Miller & Rangan Gupta, 2015. "Time-Frequency Relationship between Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty for the U.S.: Evidence from Historical Data," Working Papers 201591, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    3. K. Istrefi & A. Piloiu, 2016. "Economic policy uncertainty and inflation expectations," Rue de la Banque, Banque de France, issue 33, november..
    4. Joshua C. C. Chan, 2017. "The Stochastic Volatility in Mean Model With Time-Varying Parameters: An Application to Inflation Modeling," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 17-28, January.
    5. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1986. "A Theory of Ambiguity, Credibility, and Inflation under Discretion and Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1099-1128, September.
    6. Hwang, Y., 2001. "Relationship between inflation rate and inflation uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 179-186, November.
    7. Evans, Martin, 1991. "Discovering the Link between Inflation Rates and Inflation Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(2), pages 169-184, May.
    8. Ball, Laurence, 1992. "Why does high inflation raise inflation uncertainty?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 371-388, June.
    9. Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu & Aviral Kumar Tiwari & Stephen M. Miller & Rangan Gupta, 2019. "Time–frequency relationship between US inflation and inflation uncertainty: evidence from historical data," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(5), pages 673-702, November.
    10. Timothy Cogley & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Thomas J. Sargent, 2010. "Inflation-Gap Persistence in the US," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 43-69, January.
    11. Joshua C. C. Chan & Gary Koop & Simon M. Potter, 2013. "A New Model of Trend Inflation," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 94-106, January.
    12. Janet L. Yellen, 2017. "Inflation, uncertainty, and monetary policy," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 194-207, October.
    13. Kontonikas, A., 2004. "Inflation and inflation uncertainty in the United Kingdom, evidence from GARCH modelling," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 525-543, May.
    14. Fountas, Stilianos & Karanasos, Menelaos, 2007. "Inflation, output growth, and nominal and real uncertainty: Empirical evidence for the G7," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 229-250, March.
    15. Siem Jan Koopman & Eugenie Hol Uspensky, 2002. "The stochastic volatility in mean model: empirical evidence from international stock markets," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(6), pages 667-689, December.
    16. Mehmet Balcilar & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir & Esin Cakan, 2011. "On the Nonlinear Causality Between Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty in the G3 Countries," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 269-296, November.
    17. M. Hashem Pesaran & Yongcheol Shin & Richard J. Smith, 2001. "Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 289-326.
    18. Guglielmo Caporale & Luca Onorante & Paolo Paesani, 2012. "Inflation and inflation uncertainty in the euro area," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 597-615, October.
    19. Kim, Chang-Jin, 1993. "Unobserved-Component Time Series Models with Markov-Switching Heteroscedasticity: Changes in Regime and the Link between Inflation Rates and Inflation Uncertainty," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 11(3), pages 341-349, July.
    20. Friedman, Milton, 1977. "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 451-472, June.
    21. Grier, Kevin B. & Perry, Mark J., 1998. "On inflation and inflation uncertainty in the G7 countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 671-689, August.
    22. Abdur Chowdhury, 2014. "Inflation and inflation-uncertainty in India: the policy implications of the relationship," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 41(1), pages 71 - 86, January.
    23. Abdur Chowdhury, 2014. "Inflation and inflation-uncertainty in India: the policy implications of the relationship," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 41(1), pages 71-86, January.
    24. Robert E. Hall & Thomas J. Sargent, 2018. "Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Milton Friedman's Presidential Address," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 121-134, Winter.
    25. Zied Ftiti & Fredj Jawadi, 2019. "Forecasting Inflation Uncertainty in the United States and Euro Area," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 54(1), pages 455-476, June.
    26. Holland, A Steven, 1995. "Inflation and Uncertainty: Tests for Temporal Ordering," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(3), pages 827-837, August.
    27. Mehmet Balcilar & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2013. "Asymmetric and Time-Varying Causality between Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty in G-7 Countries," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 60(1), pages 1-42, February.
    28. Pourgerami, Abbas & Maskus, Keith E., 1987. "The effects of inflation on the predictability of price changes in Latin America: Some estimates and policy implications," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 287-290, February.
    29. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    30. Fountas, Stilianos, 2010. "Inflation, inflation uncertainty and growth: Are they related?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 896-899, September.
    31. Daal, Elton & Naka, Atsuyuki & Sanchez, Benito, 2005. "Re-examining inflation and inflation uncertainty in developed and emerging countries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 180-186, November.
    32. Daniel L. Thornton, 2012. "How did we get to inflation targeting and where do we need to go to now? a perspective from the U.S. experience," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 94(Jan), pages 65-81.
    33. Robin C. Sickles & William C. Horrace (ed.), 2014. "Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-1-4899-8008-3, January.
    34. Kevin B. Grier & Mark J. Perry, 2000. "The effects of real and nominal uncertainty on inflation and output growth: some garch-m evidence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 45-58.
    35. Engle, Robert F, 1982. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of the Variance of United Kingdom Inflation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 987-1007, July.
    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. Xindi Wang & Zeshui Xu & Xinxin Wang & Marinko Skare, 2022. "A review of inflation from 1906 to 2022: a comprehensive analysis of inflation studies from a global perspective," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 13(3), pages 595-631, September.

    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. Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu & Aviral Kumar Tiwari & Stephen M. Miller & Rangan Gupta, 2019. "Time–frequency relationship between US inflation and inflation uncertainty: evidence from historical data," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(5), pages 673-702, November.
    2. Claudiu T. Albulescu & Aviral Kumar Twari & Stephen M. Miller & Rangan Gupta, 2015. "Time-Frequency Relationship between Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty for the U.S.: Evidence from Historical Data," Working Papers 201591, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    3. Nora Abu Asab & Juan Carlos Cuestas & Alberto Montagnoli, 2018. "Inflation targeting or exchange rate targeting: Which framework supports the goal of price stability in emerging market economies?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-21, August.
    4. Chang, Kuang-Liang, 2012. "The impacts of regime-switching structures and fat-tailed characteristics on the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 523-536.
    5. Mehdi Hajamini, 2019. "Asymmetric Causality Between Inflation and Uncertainty: Evidences from 33 Developed and Developing Countries," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 17(2), pages 287-309, June.
    6. Diego Ferreira & Andreza Aparecida Palma, 2018. "Inflation And Inflation Uncertainty In Latin America: A Time-Varying Stochastic Volatility In Mean Approach," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 125, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    7. Said Zamin Shah & Said Zamin Shah & Ahmad Zubaidi Baharumshah & Muzafar Shah Habibullah & Law Siong Hook, 2017. "The Asymmetric Effects of Real and Nominal Uncertainty on Inflation and Output Growth: Empirical Evidence from Bangladesh," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(1), pages 377-386.
    8. Nasr, Adnen Ben & Balcilar, Mehmet & Ajmi, Ahdi N. & Aye, Goodness C. & Gupta, Rangan & van Eyden, Reneé, 2015. "Causality between inflation and inflation uncertainty in South Africa: Evidence from a Markov-switching vector autoregressive model," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 46-68.
    9. Kushal Banik Chowdhury & Kaustav Kanti Sarkar & Srikanta Kundu, 2021. "Nonlinear relationships between inflation, output growth and uncertainty in India: New evidence from a bivariate threshold model," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(3), pages 469-493, July.
    10. Fuest, Angela & Schmidt, Torsten, 2017. "Inflation expectation uncertainty, inflation and the output gap," Ruhr Economic Papers 673, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Said Zamin Shah & Ahmad Zubaidi Baharumshah & Muzafar Shah Habibullah, 2019. "Dynamic Linkages and Volatility Transmissions between Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Performance: Evidence from South Asian Countries," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 14(3), pages 281-313, December.
    12. Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2010. "Dynamics Of Inflation, Output Growth And Their Uncertainty In The Uk: An Empirical Analysis," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 78(6), pages 511-537, December.
    13. Broto Carmen & Ruiz Esther, 2009. "Testing for Conditional Heteroscedasticity in the Components of Inflation," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-30, May.
    14. Barnett William A. & Jawadi Fredj & Ftiti Zied, 2020. "Causal relationships between inflation and inflation uncertainty," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 24(5), pages 1-26, December.
    15. Tariq A.H. Al-Zuhd & Mohammad H. Saleh, 2017. "Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty Nexus in Kuwait: A GARCH Modeling Approach," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(5), pages 198-203.
    16. James Payne, 2009. "Inflation targeting and the inflation-inflation uncertainty relationship: evidence from Thailand," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 233-238.
    17. Mesbah Fathy Sharaf, 2015. "Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty Revisited: Evidence from Egypt," Economies, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-19, July.
    18. Mehmet Balcilar & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2013. "Asymmetric and Time-Varying Causality between Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty in G-7 Countries," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 60(1), pages 1-42, February.
    19. Dong-Hyeon Kim & Shu-Chin Lin, 2012. "Inflation and Inflation Volatility Revisited," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 327-345, December.
    20. James Payne, 2009. "Official dollarization in El Salvador and the inflation-inflation uncertainty nexus," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(12), pages 1195-1199.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    US inflation; inflation uncertainty; labor market; bounded series; NARDL; E24; E31; E58;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:wpaper:hal-02464147. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.