Center for Inflation Research
Welcome to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Center for Inflation Research. The goal of the Center is to improve the understanding of policymakers, researchers, and the public about inflation and the factors that influence its behavior. We invite you to explore the content provided in the tiles below. You may also use the menu on the left to navigate our website. Please see the About Us section to learn more about this initiative.
Learn more about the Center and our advisory council members.
Start here for inflation basics: What is inflation? How is it measured? Why does the Fed care about it?
Learn more about different measures of consumer prices, such as the consumer price index (CPI) and the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, and measures of underlying inflation, such as medians, trimmed means, and “core” measures excluding food and energy.
Median CPI ranks the price changes of the components in the CPI from lowest to highest and picks the one in the middle. Its construction makes it less sensitive to short-lived price fluctuations, thereby better capturing the trend in prices. Updated monthly.
Median PCE inflation ranks changes in the PCE price index components from lowest to highest and picks the middle one. Its construction makes it less sensitive to short-lived price fluctuations, thereby better capturing the trend in prices. Updated monthly.
Examine and compare the behavior of various measures of total inflation and underlying inflation.
Track our current forecasts of CPI inflation and PCE inflation for a given month or quarter to get a reading of inflation before the official CPI or PCE inflation data are released.
Understand why inflation expectations are important and how models and surveys are used to measure them.
Find Economic Commentary articles and working papers on our inflation-related research.
