Inflation: Frontiers of Research and Policy

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation around the world spiked to levels not seen in decades, causing distress among the public and intense debates about the causes of inflation and appropriate policy responses. More recently, inflation has fallen but remains above the levels targeted by central banks in the United States and elsewhere. Policymakers would like to reduce inflation further, but recent and prospective policy developments—including tariffs, restrictions on immigration, and threats to central bank independence—pose substantial upside risks to inflation.

To promote research on past inflation behavior, prospects for the future, and the effects of potential policy responses, the NBER, with generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, will convene a conference on March 12–13, 2026 in Cambridge, MA. The conference will be organized by Laurence Ball (Johns Hopkins University) and Yuriy Gorodnichenko (University of California, Berkeley). The conference will bring together researchers who are studying inflation dynamics and policy interventions from a number of different perspectives, including both theoretical analysis and applied research drawing on a range of data sources.

The organizers invite submissions of completed research papers as well as short proposals, three to five pages long, that describe research papers that will be completed by February, 2026. Preference will be given to papers that shed light on current inflation developments and policy issues as well as inflation dynamics more generally. A non-exhaustive list of potential topics includes:

• Identification and measurement of the basic forces driving inflation, including expectations, slack or tightness in the labor market and economy in general, sectoral shocks, and fiscal and monetary policy.
• Lessons about inflation behavior from the pandemic-era rise and subsequent retreat of inflation, and prospects for reaching central bank inflation targets.
• Implications for inflation of current and prospective policy actions including tariffs, restrictions on immigration, threats to central bank independence, changes in government spending and taxes, and fiscal dominance.
• The costs of inflation, the public’s perceptions of these costs (including scarring effects), and the influence of inflation developments on politics, including the 2024 Presidential election and more generally political polarization.
• Actual and optimal responses by monetary policymakers to an environment of policy shocks, uncertainty, and political pressures.
• Methods for measuring core or underlying inflation and the use of these concepts in economic forecasting and policymaking.
• Analyses of microdata on firms and households that shed light on the behavior of aggregate inflation.
• New perspectives on the Phillips curve, sacrifice ratios, and related concepts.

Submissions of both empirical and theoretical research, and of papers and proposals by scholars who are early in their careers and who are not NBER affiliates are welcome. Please do not submit papers that have already been accepted for publication. To be considered for the conference, upload submissions by midnight (ET) on Thursday, July 17, 2025. Authors chosen to present papers will be notified in August, 2025.

Papers that are selected for the conference will be considered for a special issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics, subject to editorial review. The NBER will cover the cost for up to two presenters per paper to attend the meeting; other co-authors are welcome to attend at their own expense. Each team of authors will also receive a modest honorarium.

Questions about this conference may be directed to confer@nber.org.