EcoFin Research Papers

The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited fundamental debates about the stability, slope, and empirical relevance of the Phillips Curve. While the relationship between inflation and economic slack deteriorated during the pandemic, recent scholarship offers new insights that complicate simplified narratives about the curve’s failure. This meta-analysis synthesizes evidence from pre-COVID panel studies and the rapidly growing body of post-2020 research. Earlier cross-country analyses illustrate that the inflation–unemployment relationship is highly conditional on macroeconomic tranquillity, institutional structure, and inflation expectations, particularly during recessionary periods. Post-COVID research advances this perspective by uncovering substantial nonlinearities, structural breaks, frequency-dependent dynamics, anchored expectation effects, trend inflation interactions, and regional heterogeneity. The pandemic shock provides an empirical environment in which many conventional mechanisms behave atypically, yet recent studies show that the Phillips relationship re-emerges once expectations stabilize and supply disruptions ease. Integrating evidence from hybrid NKPC models, time-varying instrumental variable techniques, Bayesian structural break approaches, spatial panels, sectoral analyses, and explainable machine learning, this study concludes that the Phillips Curve has neither collapsed nor returned unchanged. Instead, its apparent instability reflects the interaction between forward-looking expectations, inflation persistence, structural labor-market transformations, capacity constraints, and global supply linkages. These findings reaffirm the importance of hybrid modeling frameworks and caution against interpreting reduced-form flattening as evidence of structural irrelevance.

Aginta, H. (2023). Revisiting the Phillips curve for Indonesia: What can we learn from data? Journal of Asian Economics, 85, Article 101592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101592

Ashley, R., & Verbrugge, R. (2025). The intermittent Phillips curve: Finding a stable (but persistence-dependent) Phillips curve model specification. Economic Inquiry, 63(3), 926–944. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13281

Czudaj, R. L. (2024). Expectation formation and the Phillips curve revisited. Macroeconomic Dynamics, 29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1365100524000051

Dladla, P., & Malikane, C. (2022). Inflation dynamics in an emerging market: The case of South Africa. Economic Analysis and Policy, 73, 262–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eap.2021.11.016

Fratianni, M., Gallegati, M., & Giri, F. (2022). The medium-run Phillips curve: A time-frequency investigation for the UK. Journal of Macroeconomics, 73, Article 103450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2022.103450

Haschka, R. E. (2024). Examining the New Keynesian Phillips curve in the U.S.: Why has the relationship between inflation and unemployment weakened? Research in Economics, 78(4), Article 100987. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100987

Hawkins, R. J. (2025). Phillips loops, economic relaxation, and inflation dynamics. AppliedMath, 5(2), Article 51. https://doi.org/10.3390/appliedmath5020051

Hazell, J., Herreño, J., Nakamura, E., & Steinsson, J. (2022). The slope of the Phillips curve: Evidence from US states. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(3), 1299–1344. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac010

Holm, M. B., Lerdalen, L. O., & Vines, D. (2024). The effect of capacity constraints on the slope of the Phillips curve. Oxford Economic Papers, 76(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpae012

Inoue, A., Rossi, B., & Wang, Y. R. (2025). Has the Phillips curve flattened? Econometric Theory. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266466625100169

Jorgensen, P. L., & Lansing, K. J. (2025). Anchored inflation expectations and the slope of the Phillips curve. European Economic Review, 178, Article 105073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105073

Katagiri, M. (2022). Equilibrium yield curve, the Phillips curve, and monetary policy. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 54(8), 2235–2272. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmcb.12919

Kirpson, G., & Staehr, K. (2024). Do individuals expect the Phillips curve? Evidence from the European Consumer Expectations Survey. Economics Letters, 234, Article 111430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111430

Kishaba, Y., & Okuda, T. (2025). The slope of the Phillips curve for service prices in Japan: Regional panel data approach. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 78, Article 101388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jjie.2025.101388

Kocherlakota, N. R. (2025). The concavity of the Phillips curve in time-dependent pricing models. Economica. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.70011

Kohlscheen, E., & Moessner, R. (2022). Globalisation and the slope of the Phillips curve. Economics Letters, 216, Article 110587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110587

Lasarte-Navamuel, E., Pérez-Rivero, J. L., & Montania, C. (2025). An empirical analysis of regional Phillips curve with spatial dependence. Regional Science Policy and Practice, 17(2), Article 100162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rspp.2024.100162

Mallick, D. (2024). The Phillips curve in Australia in the era of inflation targeting. Australian Economic Review, 57(3), 272–282. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12576

Martins, M. M. F., & Verona, F. (2023). Inflation dynamics in the frequency domain. Economics Letters, 231, Article 111304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111304

Mendes, I., Aragón, E. K. D. B., & Silva, M. E. A. (2025). Trend inflation and weak identification in the New Keynesian Phillips curve. Economics Letters, 255, Article 112517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112517

Pratap, B., Pawar, A., & Sengupta, S. (2025). Non-linear Phillips curve for India: Evidence from explainable machine learning. Computational Economics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-025-10942-z

Siena, D., & Zago, R. (2024). Job polarisation, labour market fluidity and the flattening of the Phillips curve. Economic Journal, 134(661), 2141–2174. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae006

Smith, S. C., Timmermann, A., & Wright, J. H. (2025). Breaks in the Phillips curve: Evidence from panel data. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 40(2), 131–148. https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.3102

Sovbetov, I. (2025a). The hybrid Phillips curve and inflation in post-Soviet Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Post-Communist Economies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631377.2025.2576203

Sovbetov, I. (2025b). Inflation Dynamics and Real Marginal Cost Decomposition: A Cross-Country Analysis of the Hybrid NKPC. SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6075832

Sovbetov, Y. (2019). Phillips curve estimation during tranquil and recessionary periods. Istanbul Journal of Economics, 69(1), 23–41. https://doi.org/10.26650/ISTJECON2019-0016

Sovbetov, Y., & Kaplan, M. (2019a). Causes of failure of the Phillips Curve: Does tranquillity of economic environment matter? European Journal of Applied Economics, 16(2), 139–154. https://doi.org/10.5937/EJAE16-21569

Sovbetov, Y., & Kaplan, M. (2019b). Empirical examination of the stability of Expectations–Augmented Phillips Curve for developing and developed countries. Theoretical and Applied Economics, 26(2/619), 63–78.