In a recent opinion piece (“How the Fed Should Measure Inflation,” Sept. 24, 2026), The Economist revisits a familiar cautionary story. Under Chairman Arthur Burns, the Federal Reserve routinely set aside “special factors” in the inflation data in search of the one true inflation rate. That practice led the Fed to underestimate the emerging inflation threat in the 1970s.

Chairman Warsh appears determined to avoid repeating that mistake and seems to favor trimmed-mean measures of inflation. The Economist urges him to embrace them, and I agree.

Trimmed-mean estimators apply a consistent statistical rule, discarding the most extreme price movements each period, and so avoid Burns’s error: they don’t rely on judgment calls about which price changes to ignore.

My thanks to The Economist for acknowledging Steve’s and my founding research on the approach.