Publications

July 1, 2022
Editorial

New Transparency Rule Helps Rein in Health Care Costs

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Cynthia A. Fisher

Over the last year, consumer prices have grown 60% faster than wages. Employers can help their employees contend with this high inflation by addressing a long-running source: health care costs. View Details

Keywords: Healthcare Costs; Consumer Prices; Inflation and Deflation; Wages; Health Industry

2018
Mimeo

Measuring Venezuela's Inflation Using Crowdsourcing and Mobile Phones

By: Alberto Cavallo

Keywords: Inflation; Crowdsourcing; Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Venezuela

Article

Online and Official Price Indexes: Measuring Argentina's Inflation

By: Alberto Cavallo

Prices collected from online retailers can be used to construct daily price indexes that complement official statistics. This paper studies their ability to match official inflation estimates in five Latin American countries, with a focus on Argentina, where official... View Details

Keywords: Inflation; Online Price Index; Economics; Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Price; Latin America; Argentina

December 2013 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Breaking Bad (the Rules): Argentina Defaults, Inflates (and Grows), 1997–2015

By: Rafael Di Tella and Fernanda Miguel

In late October 2011, after losing 1 billion of dollar reserves in one month, the Argentine government began imposing a series of currency controls, limiting the ability to buy foreign currency. As of October 2011, Argentina's tax collection agency AFIP had been... View Details

Keywords: Default; Inflation; Inflation and Deflation; Currency; Governance Controls; Argentina

Educators

July 1986
Article

Inflation, Uncertainty and Investment

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and R. S. Ruback

Keywords: Inflation and Deflation; Investment; Risk and Uncertainty

October 2012
Case

Brazil 2003: Inflation Targeting and Debt Dynamics (Abridged)

By: Laura Alfaro and Rafael Di Tella

In October 2002, Brazilians elected a left-wing president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, for the first time in that country's history. As markets faltered in response, Lula sought to reaffirm his commitment to fiscal discipline, a floating exchange rate, and inflation... View Details

Keywords: Brazil; Inflation; Emerging Markets; Inflation and Deflation; Brazil

Educators

12 Nov 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy

Keywords: by Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman, and Jenny Tang

February 2011 (Revised July 2011)
Supplement

Aluar: Aluminio Argentino S.A. (B)

By: David F. Hawkins, Hernan Etiennot, Gustavo A. Herrero and Hugo Pentenero

Argentine government claims inflation rate is 8 percent but others claim it is double that rate. Analysts' attempts to adjust the company's financial statements for inflation. View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Inflation and Deflation; Argentina

2025
Working Paper

Markups and Cost Pass-through Along the Supply Chain

By: Santiago Alvarez-Blaser, Alberto Cavallo, Alexander MacKay and Paolo Mengano

We study markups and pricing strategies along the supply chain. Our unique dataset combines detailed price and cost information from a large global manufacturer with matched retail prices collected online for the period July 2018 through June 2023. We show that total... View Details

Keywords: Markups; Pricing; Price; Supply Chain; Inflation and Deflation; Cost

SSRN

Article

Inflation and Taxes in a Growing Economy with Debt and Equity

By: M. Feldstein, Jerry R. Green and Eytan Sheshinski

Our tax system was designed for an economy with little or no inflation. The current paper shows that inflation causes capricious changes in the effective rate of tax on capital income and therefore in the real net rate of return that savers receive. This is not only a... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Inflation and Deflation; Economy

Article

Learning from Potentially Biased Statistics: Household Inflation Perceptions and Expectations in Argentina

By: Alberto Cavallo, Guillermo Cruces and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

When forming expectations, households may be influenced by perceived bias in the information they receive. In this paper, we study how individuals learn from potentially biased statistics using data from both a natural experiment and a survey experiment during a... View Details

Keywords: Inflation Expectations; Bayesian Estimation; Inflation and Deflation; Information; Household; Behavior; Argentina

May 2004 (Revised July 2008)
Teaching Note

Brazil 2003: Inflation Targeting and Debt Dynamics (TN)

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

Teaching Note to (9-704-028). View Details

Keywords: Inflation and Deflation; Borrowing and Debt; Brazil

February 2007
Article

The Persistence of Inflation Versus that of Real Marginal Cost in the New Keynesian Model

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This note provides an example where the New Keynesian Phillips Curve leads inflation to be substantially more persistent than the output gap. View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Cost

2025
Working Paper

Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs

By: Alberto Cavallo, Paola Llamas and Franco Vazquez

This paper examines the short-run impact of the 2025 U.S. tariffs on consumer prices using a unique integration of high-frequency retail pricing data, product-level country-of-origin information, and detailed tariff classifications. By linking daily prices from major... View Details

Keywords: Tariffs; Trade; Price; Inflation and Deflation

2024
Working Paper

How Inflation Expectations De-Anchor: The Role of Selective Memory Cues

By: Nicola Gennaioli, Marta Leva, Raphael Schoenle and Andrei Shleifer

In a model of memory and selective recall, household inflation expectations remain rigid when inflation is anchored but exhibit sharp instability during inflation surges, as similarity prompts retrieval of forgotten high-inflation experiences. Using data from the New... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Inflation and Deflation; Personal Finance

Register to Read

January–March 2000
Article

Un nuevo índice de precios para México, 1886-1929 [A New Price Index for Mexico, 1886-1929]

By: Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato and Aldo Musacchio

We present new price indices for the period 1886-1929. These indices have several advantages with respect to the previous ones: i) they cover the whole period with the same methodology, and by reaching 1929 these series can be joined with contemporary price indices,... View Details

Keywords: Price; Inflation and Deflation; Macroeconomics; Mexico

June 2003
Article

Thinking Real: Key to Financial Analysis in Deflationary Periods

By: David Hawkins

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Finance; Theory; Inflation and Deflation

2020
Working Paper

Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from U.S. Trade Policy

By: Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman and Jenny Tang

We use micro data collected at the border and the store to characterize the price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, and consumers. At the border, import tariff passthrough is much higher than exchange rate passthrough. Chinese exporters did not... View Details

Keywords: Trade Policy; Tariffs; Exchange Rate Passthrough; Economics; Trade; Policy; Inflation and Deflation; United States; China

November 2019
Case

Floating the Exchange Rate: In Pursuit of the Chinese Dream

By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong

In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China’s economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country’s leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling... View Details

Keywords: Exchange Rate; Inflation; Debt; Currency Exchange Rate; Inflation and Deflation; Borrowing and Debt; China

Educators