TY - JOUR AU - Gali,Jordi AU - Gertler,Mark TI - Inflation Dynamics: A Structural Econometric Analysis JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 7551 PY - 2000 Y2 - February 2000 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7551 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7551.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jordi Gali Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI) Ramon Trias Fargas 25 08005 Barcelona SPAIN Tel: 011-34-93-5422754 Fax: 011-34-93-5421860 E-Mail: jgali@crei.cat Mark Gertler Department of Economics New York University 269 Mercer Street, 7th Floor New York, NY 10003 Tel: 212/998-8931 Fax: 212/995-4186 E-Mail: mark.gertler@nyu.edu AB - We develop and estimate a structural model of inflation that allows for a fraction of firms that use a backward looking rule to set prices. The model nests the purely forward looking New Keynesian Phillips curve as a particular case. We use measures of arginal cost as the relevant determinant of inflation, as the theory suggests, instead of an ad-hoc output gap. Real marginal costs are a significant and quantitatively important determinant of inflation. Backward looking price setting, while statistically significant, is not quantitatively important. Thus, we conclude that the New Keynesian Phillips curve provides a good first approximation to the dynamics of inflation. ER -