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NAIRU’s Dead

NAIRU’s Dead

In an environment where unemployment’s going down and there are concerns about a looming uptick in inflation, you might expect interest in NAIRU — or the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, to increase. But that hasn’t happened.

NAIRU’s Dead

Instead, Google Trends shows interest in the term falling to its lowest in years. Sure Google Trends isn’t a perfect measure of an idea’s popularity, but combined with recent comments from the Federal Reserve, it does feel like NAIRU is on its way to being consigned to the same economic dust heap as the Phillips Curve. 

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