New Keynesian Economics and the Phillips Curve

Models with sticky prices are an important part of New Keynesian economics. The author shows that several of the New Keynesian models imply a formulation that is similar to the expectations-augmented Phillips curve of Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps. He then presents new estimates of the New Keynesian Phillips curve. The author uses two proxies for price expectations: survey-based measures and an econometric-based measure originally developed by Bennett McCallum (1976). Overall, the results are consistent with the model but the survey-based results are more precise, suggesting that the surveys may be better measures of actual expectations.