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Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy

Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy

A Phillips Curve Retrospective

Edited by Jeff Fuhrer, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little and Giovanni P. Olivei

Foreword by Paul A. Samuelson

Hardcover

520 pp., 6 x 9 in,

Hardcover
9780262013635
Published: September 11, 2009
Publisher: The MIT Press

$50.00

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Current perspectives on the Phillips curve, a core macroeconomic concept that treats the relationship between inflation and unemployment.

In 1958, economist A. W. Phillips published an article describing what he observed to be the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment; subsequently, the “Phillips curve” became a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. But today's Phillips curve is not the same as the original one from fifty years ago; the economy, our understanding of price setting behavior, the determinants of inflation, and the role of monetary policy have evolved significantly since then. In this book, some of the top economists working today reexamine the theoretical and empirical validity of the Phillips curve in its more recent specifications. The contributors consider such questions as what economists have learned about price and wage setting and inflation expectations that would improve the way we use and formulate the Phillips curve, what the Phillips curve approach can teach us about inflation dynamics, and how these lessons can be applied to improving the conduct of monetary policy.

Contributors
Lawrence Ball, Ben Bernanke, Oliver Blanchard, V. V. Chari, William T. Dickens, Stanley Fischer, Jeff Fuhrer, Jordi Gali, Michael T. Kiley, Robert G. King, Donald L. Kohn, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little, Bartisz Mackowiak, N. Gregory Mankiw, Virgiliu Midrigan, Giovanni P. Olivei, Athanasios Orphanides, Adrian R. Pagan, Christopher A. Pissarides, Lucrezia Reichlin, Paul A. Samuelson, Christopher A. Sims, Frank R. Smets, Robert M. Solow, Jürgen Stark, James H. Stock, Lars E. O. Svensson, John B. Taylor, Mark W. Watson

Jeff Fuhrer is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Foundation Fellow at the Eastern Bank Foundation. He was previously Executive Vice President and Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where he was also responsible for the bank's diversity and inclusion functions.

Yolanda Kodrzycki is an economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Jane Little is an economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Giovanni Olivei is an economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Paul Samuelson (1915–2009) received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970. He was Institute Professor, Emeritus; Professor of Economics, Emeritus; and Gordon Y. Billard Fellow at MIT. His influential Economics: An Introductory Analysis is the most widely used economics textbook ever published.

Preface

Index

Sample Chapter