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SeedPublished 2026-10-23

Did the Phillips curve steepen after the pandemic?

The Phillips curve, monetary policy rules and labour market tightness are all rising keywords in the economics journals, after an inflation surge that flat Phillips curves did not predict. Only 7 of 27 recent Phillips-curve papers carry a pandemic, tightness or nonlinearity keyword. Is the curve steep when labour markets are tight, and what does that mean for policy rules?

economicsmacroeconomics

What prompted this#

In economics, "Phillips curve" (7 papers in July–September 2026 against about 2 expected), "monetary policy rules" (7 against 2) and "labor market tightness" (6 against 1) are all growing (see the economics dashboard), and the New Keynesian Phillips curve is on the equation ranking's list. Since October 2025, 27 papers carry a Phillips-curve keyword (20 in economics journals); 7 of them carry a labour-market-tightness, pandemic or nonlinear keyword.

Questions#

  • Measured with vacancies per unemployed worker rather than unemployment, is the curve steep when labour markets are tight and flat otherwise?
  • Does the same pattern hold across countries and across US cities, where tightness varied?
  • Would policy rules that respond to tightness have kept inflation steadier?

Data that could help#

Vacancies and unemployment by country and metro area, inflation (FRED, OECD) and inflation expectation surveys.

Next step#

Estimate a Phillips curve with the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio and a tightness threshold on US metro data for 2000–2025.

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
Phillips curve2#130358
monetary policy rules0–41
labor market tightness2#130321

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/phillips-curve-after-the-pandemic.md

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Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Did the Phillips curve steepen after the pandemic?. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/phillips-curve-after-the-pandemic

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-phillips-curve-after-the-pandemic,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Did the Phillips curve steepen after the pandemic?},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/phillips-curve-after-the-pandemic}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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