Understanding Inflation

After decades of relatively stable prices, the COVID pandemic and the policy responses to the pandemic reintroduced Americans to sustained and high rates of price inflation. We learned very quickly that people hate inflation. While actions taken by the Federal Reserve ultimately stabilized prices, we are again facing inflationary pressure created by war and the attendant interruptions to the shipment of oil, fertilizer, and other key inputs to the global economy.

What causes inflation?  What connects global developments such as the pandemic or military conflict to increasing prices? Is price inflation somehow related to the abundance agenda? What can policymakers do to combat inflation? And what is the connection between inflation and unemployment?

Join us for a moderated discussion of these questions and more with Erika McEntarfer, Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Martha Olney, Teaching Professor Emerita, UC Berkeley Department of Economics and author of the recent book Inflation, published by MIT Press.  

Dr. McEntarfer will also give a lunchtime talk about her career as a government economist earlier in the day at the Goldman School of Public Policy.

About the Speakers

Erika McEntarfer is a Tad and Diane Taube Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She most recently served as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2024 to 2025, and as Senior Economist on the Council of Economic Advisors from 2022 to 2023. In total, she has spent over two decades in nonpolitical roles across the federal government. Her public service work has focused on developing new economic insights by linking government data in novel ways, and the creation of new labor market statistics. Her research on labor market dynamics has been published in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, the Journal of Labor Economics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Bard College and a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech.

Martha Olney is a Teaching Professor Emerita in Berkeley’s Economics Department where she taught from 1992 to 2022. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She has also taught at Stanford University (2001) and Siena College (2011-2012). She received her PhD from Berkeley in 1985. Her research is in the areas of macroeconomics and economic history as well as pedagogy, and has been published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic History, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Economic Education, and elsewhere. She is the author of Buy Now, Pay Later (UNC Press, 1991) and Inflation (MIT Press, 2025) as well as several economics textbooks. Professor Olney is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic History Association and is the recipient of multiple teaching and mentoring awards including Distinguished Teaching Awards from UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley’s Social Science Division, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, plus awards from Phi Beta Kappa, the Economic History Association, The Stavros Center for Economic Education, and UC Berkeley’s Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of GSIs. She served on the academic advisory board of the Financial Services Research Program of George Washington University and on the boards of the American Economic Association (AEA)  Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, the Economic History Association (ex officio), and the Business History Conference. She is currently a member of the board of the AEA’s Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession (CSQIEP) and Berkeley’s Faculty Senate Committee on Faculty Welfare.

Accessibility Accommodations

If you require accommodation for a disability for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Zi Lin Li at irle@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.