Do "Shortages" Cause Inflation?

Owen A. Lamont

No 5402, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: I count the number of times per month that the word `shortage' appears on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for the period 1969-1994. Using this as a general measure of shortages in the US economy, I test whether shortages help predict inflation. Using a variety of different specifications, I find that this time-series measure of shortages strongly predicts inflation, and contains information not captured by commodity prices, monetary aggregates, interest rates, and other proposed predictors of inflation. This suggests that disequilibrium was an important part of the adjustment of prices to macroeconomic shocks during this period.

JEL-codes: E31 C82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995-12
Note: ME
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Published as Owen Lamont. "Do “Shortages” Cause Inflation?," in Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, Editors, "Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy" University of Chicago Press (1997)

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