Yellen: Looking For Inflation In All The Wrong Places

In 1958, economist W.H. Phillips wrote a paper that argued an inverse relationship existed between wage inflation and unemployment. The crux of his theory was when unemployment is high wage growth is absent; but when the unemployment rate is low wages rise rapidly. Philips established his theory under the framework of a curve and it was aptly referred to as “The Phillips Curve”. However, many economists wrongly adopted the Phillips Curve by relating it to general price inflation, rather than to just wage inflation. Sadly for Phillips Curve enthusiasts, the high inflation and high employment rates of the 1970’s turned this metric on its head. 

Stagflation in the U.S. throughout the 1970’s proved high inflation and high unemployment can—and often do–exist concurrently, thus rendering the Phillips Curve obsolete. This same phenomenon where rising inflation coincides with a rising unemployment rate has also been witnessed throughout the globe. Fittingly, the notion that more people working was the cause of inflation should have found its place in the Wall of Shame of economic theories, sandwiched in between other items falling out of vogue at the time, such as toe socks and the pet rock. 

However, the Keynesian economists who held this curve in such high esteem in the 1960’s, were somehow unable to let it go. Therefore, a new metric was created rooted in the Phillips Curve, but conveniently much more ambiguous. They called this metric the Nonaccelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU).  The idea behind NAIRU is inflation and unemployment really only become correlated once unemployment falls below a certain calculated rate. But you have to understand that the Fed’s number for NAIRU is more elastic and flexible than Gumby. And when it does fall below that predetermined rate, as it did from 1996-2000, and inflation (as the Fed measures it) is still absent, the Fed must come up with an excuse for its inaction.