IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/29609.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring U.S. Core Inflation: The Stress Test of COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence M. Ball
  • Daniel Leigh
  • Prachi Mishra
  • Antonio Spilimbergo

Abstract

Large price changes in industries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused erratic fluctuations in the U.S. headline inflation rate. This paper compares alternative approaches to filtering out the transitory effects of these industry price changes and measuring the underlying or core level of inflation over 2020-2021. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of core, the inflation rate excluding food and energy prices, has performed poorly: over most of 2020-21, it is almost as volatile as headline inflation. Measures of core that exclude a fixed set of additional industries, such as the Atlanta Fed’s sticky-price inflation rate, have been less volatile, but the least volatile have been measures that filter out large price changes in any industry, such as the Cleveland Fed’s median inflation rate and the Dallas Fed’s trimmed mean inflation rate. These core measures have followed smooth paths, drifting down when the economy was weak in 2020 and then rising as the economy has rebounded.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence M. Ball & Daniel Leigh & Prachi Mishra & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2021. "Measuring U.S. Core Inflation: The Stress Test of COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 29609, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29609
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w29609.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Gordon, 1975. "The Impact of Aggregate Demand on Prices," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(3), pages 613-670.
    2. Tiff Macklem, 2001. "A New Measure of Core Inflation," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2001(Autumn), pages 3-12.
    3. Theodore M. Crone & N. Neil K. Khettry & Loretta J. Mester & Jason A. Novak, 2013. "Core Measures of Inflation as Predictors of Total Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(2‐3), pages 505-519, March.
    4. Jim Dolmas & Evan F. Koenig, 2019. "Two Measures of Core Inflation: A Comparison," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(4).
    5. Laurence Ball & Sandeep Mazumder, 2020. "The Nonpuzzling Behavior of Median Inflation," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Gonzalo Castex & Jordi Galí & Diego Saravia (ed.),Changing Inflation Dynamics,Evolving Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 27, chapter 3, pages 049-070, Central Bank of Chile.
    6. Michael F. Bryan & Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1994. "Measuring Core Inflation," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 195-219, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Michael F. Bryan & Christopher J. Pike, 1991. "Median price changes: an alternative approach to measuring current monetary inflation," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Dec.
    8. repec:mcb:jmoncb:v:45:y:2013:i::p:505-519 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Randal J. Verbrugge, 2021. "Is It Time to Reassess the Focal Role of Core PCE Inflation?," Working Papers 21-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    10. Jonathon Hazell & Juan Herreño & Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2022. "The Slope of the Phillips Curve: Evidence from U.S. States," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(3), pages 1299-1344.
    11. Adam Hale Shapiro, 2020. "A Simple Framework to Monitor Inflation," Working Paper Series 2020-29, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    12. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2019. "Slack and Cyclically Sensitive Inflation," NBER Working Papers 25987, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jim Dolmas, 2005. "Trimmed mean PCE inflation," Working Papers 0506, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    14. Smith, Julie K, 2004. "Weighted Median Inflation: Is This Core Inflation?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 253-263, April.
    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. Carlomagno, Guillermo & Fornero, Jorge & Sansone, Andrés, 2023. "A proposal for constructing and evaluating core inflation measures," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 4(3).

    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. Ball, Laurence & Carvalho, Carlos & Evans, Christopher & Antonio Ricci, Luca, 2024. "Weighted Median Inflation Around the World: A Measure of Core Inflation," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Brent Meyer & Guhan Venkatu, 2012. "Trimmed-mean inflation statistics: just hit the one in the middle," Working Papers (Old Series) 1217, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    3. Brent Meyer & Saeed Zaman, 2019. "The usefulness of the median CPI in Bayesian VARs used for macroeconomic forecasting and policy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 603-630, August.
    4. Verbrugge, Randal & Zaman, Saeed, 2024. "Improving inflation forecasts using robust measures," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 735-745.
    5. Alan K. Detmeister, 2011. "The usefulness of core PCE inflation measures," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-56, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Carlomagno, Guillermo & Fornero, Jorge & Sansone, Andrés, 2023. "A proposal for constructing and evaluating core inflation measures," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 4(3).
    7. Guillermo Carlomagno & Jorge Fornero & Andrés Sansone, 2021. "Toward a general framework for constructing and evaluating core inflation measures," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 913, Central Bank of Chile.
    8. Gamber, Edward N. & Smith, Julie K. & Eftimoiu, Raluca, 2015. "The dynamic relationship between core and headline inflation," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 38-53.
    9. Brent Meyer & Saeed Zaman, 2013. "It’s not just for inflation: The usefulness of the median CPI in BVAR forecasting," Working Papers (Old Series) 1303, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    10. Laurence Ball & Sandeep Mazumder, 2020. "The Nonpuzzling Behavior of Median Inflation," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Gonzalo Castex & Jordi Galí & Diego Saravia (ed.),Changing Inflation Dynamics,Evolving Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 27, chapter 3, pages 049-070, Central Bank of Chile.
    11. Durai, S. Raja Sethu & Ramachandran, M., 2007. "Core inflation for India," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 365-383, April.
    12. Sigal Ribon, 2009. "Core Inflation Indices for Israel," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2009.08, Bank of Israel.
    13. Christian Garciga & Randal J. Verbrugge & Saeed Zaman, 2024. "The Effect of Component Disaggregation on Measures of the Median and Trimmed-Mean CPI," Working Papers 24-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    14. Jim Dolmas & Evan F. Koenig, 2019. "Two Measures of Core Inflation: A Comparison," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(4).
    15. Antoine Lalliard & Pierre-Antoine Robert, 2022. "A possible new indicator to measure core inflation in the euro area [Un nouvel indicateur possible pour mesurer l’inflation sous-jacente en zone euro]," Bulletin de la Banque de France, Banque de France, issue 240.
    16. Oguz Atuk & Mustafa Utku Ozmen, 2009. "Design and Evaluation of Core Inflation Measures for Turkey," Working Papers 0903, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    17. Randal J. Verbrugge, 2021. "Is It Time to Reassess the Focal Role of Core PCE Inflation?," Working Papers 21-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    18. 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.
    19. Andrea Brischetto & Anthony Richards, 2006. "The Performance of Trimmed Mean Measures of Underlying Inflation," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2006-10, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    20. Dietrich, Alexander M., 2023. "Consumption categories, household attention, and inflation expectations: Implications for optimal monetary policy," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 157, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    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:nbr:nberwo:29609. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.