For example, the five-year forward measure of breakeven inflation generated from differences in the nominal Treasury yield curve and the TIPS yield curve has shown a modest rise since mid-2010 back into the range that has generally been in place for the past decade (Chart 29). Second, the long-term inflation expectations of professional forecasters have been very stable. As shown in Chart 30, the median long-term inflation forecast in the Professional Forecasters’ survey remains around 2.1 percent for the PCE deflator. In terms of household expectations, there has been an increase in short-term expectations. This typically occurs when commodities such as gasoline go up sharply in price. However, even here longer-term expectations remain well-anchored. As shown in Chart 31, the University of Michigan median five-year inflation expectations measure remains around 2.9 percent – comfortably within its normal range and historically consistent with slightly lower realized inflation. To summarize the main points, we have a considerable amount of slack, little evidence of discontinuous speed limit effects, and little inflation pass-through from commodities into core inflation when inflation expectations are well-anchored, which is currently the case. This suggests that the biggest risk in terms of higher underlying inflation over the next year or two is that inflation expectations could become unanchored. This might occur, for example, if there were a loss of confidence in the ability and/or willingness of the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy in a timely way in order to keep inflation in check.
In Hong Kong, banking, in a rather narrow definition, is estimated to contribute about 7.5% to gross domestic product and about 3.5% to employment. Despite the withdrawal of a number of individual banks, particularly Japanese, from Hong Kong in the late 1990s, the share of banking in GDP appears to have remained roughly stable for a number of years now. However, the share in employment has declined somewhat of late – as has also been evident in, for example, the USA and UK over a slightly longer period. This implies that there have been significant productivity gains, including no doubt those arising from the process of consolidation, which has been evident among international banks with presences in Hong Kong for some time and has now been spreading to the local banks. Permit me one further historical reflection, related partly to my earlier comment about attitudes towards banking. When I first studied economics, there was a respected body of literature which argued that productivity growth in manufacturing would always outstrip that in other sectors because manufacturing was more amenable to the application of new technologies and economies of scale. In services, output was regarded as too firmly dependent on the specific input of labour for there to be much scope for productivity gains.