This paper explores a monetary-policy model with habit formation for consumers, in which consumers' utility depends in part on current consumption relative to past consumption. The empirical tests developed in the paper show that one can reject the hypothesis of no habit formation with tremendous confidence, largely because the habit-formation model captures the gradual hump-shaped response of real spending to various shocks. The paper then embeds the habit-consumption specification in a monetary-policy model and finds that the responses of both spending and inflation to monetary-policy actions are significantly improved by this modification.

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The seminal work of Phelps, Taylor, and Cairo developed forwardlooking models of price determination that imparted inertia to the price leveh These models incorporate expectations of future prices and excess demand by imposing constraints (typically lag-lead symmetry constrainls) that force future variables to enter the specification. In this paper, I test the empirical significance of future prices-in specifications like those of Taylor. I find that expectations of future prices are empirically unimportant in explaining price and inflation behavior. However, the dynamics of a model_that includes a purely backwardlooking inflation specification differ' significantly-and not altogether pleasingly-from those with a forward-looking specification.

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