VOX  CEPR Policy Portal

Researchers have put forward two explanations for the failure of the US inflation rate to fall as far during the Great Recession as the Phillips curve would predict. Either expectations have been successfully anchored by the Fed’s inflation target, or the Phillips curve is focusing on the wrong thing – aggregate unemployment instead of short-term unemployment. This column shows that the two explanations are complementary; together, they explain the puzzle, but separately they cannot.