International Measures of Common Inflation

Abstract

A key challenge for monetary policymakers in achieving their inflation goals—particularly important at the current juncture—is to be able to distinguish between persistent inflationary changes and short-term idiosyncratic shocks. The most common approach for filtering out short-term price shocks from inflation is to focus on measures of "core" inflation, traditionally defined as the change in the consumer price index (CPI) excluding food and energy prices.