The evolution of inflation and unemployment: Explaining the roaring nineties

Abstract

This paper argues that there is a nonzero inflation-unemployment tradeoff in the long-run due to frictional growth, a phenomenon that encapsulates the interplay of nominal staggering and money growth. The existence of a downward-sloping long-run Phillips curve suggests the development of a holistic framework that can jointly explain the evolution of inflation and unemployment. Hence, we estimate an interactive dynamics model for the US that includes wage-price setting and labour market equations. We then evaluate the inflation-unemployment tradeoff and assess the impact of productivity, money growth, budget deficit, and trade deficit on the unemployment and inflation trajectories during the nineties