of course, students ’ reliance on debt and the returns from graduating vary across educational institutions. of particular interest here is recent work by raj chetty and his co - authors showing that some colleges — some of which can be found in the cuny and california state systems — appear to be much better at fostering economic mobility than others. in other words, they accept relatively large numbers of lower - income students while also producing large numbers of high earners, which means that these institutions facilitate considerable upward mobility. learning exactly how they do it and how it can be replicated strikes me as a first - order question for further study. recent research by caroline hoxby to assess differences in productivity across educational institutions makes important progress in that direction. in summary, academic research on the financing, costs, and returns of higher education is more important now than it has ever been. we are pleased to have many of those researchers participating in this conference. i would like to thank raji chakrabarti and wilbert van der klaauw and the new york fed ’ s research group for organizing this timely conference, and for bringing together this superb group of scholars. thank you all for your participation. i wish you a very productive and enjoyable conference. 1 betsy bourassa, rajashri chakrabarti, andrew haughwout, and wilbert van der klaauw assisted in preparing these remarks. 2 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches

through foreclosures are likely to seek new homes as their income permits, even though many may re - enter the housing market as renters rather than buyers. on the state and local side, a rising economy should boost sales and income tax revenue, and help narrow near - term fiscal shortfalls. we also need to remain watchful for signs that low interest rates could foster a buildup of financial excesses or bubbles that might pose a medium - term risk to both full employment and price stability. fortunately, current risk spreads on u. s. financial assets are not unduly compressed. this suggests that people are still being relatively cautious about taking on a lot of financial asset risk. on the inflation side of the ledger, there are some signs that core inflation is now stabilizing after falling for several years. at the fed, we track core inflation ( which excludes the volatile food and energy prices ) because experience and research tell us that core inflation provides the best measure of whether overall inflationary pressures are building up or subsiding. core inflation has proven quite reliable in predicting future total, or “ headline ” inflation rates. at the moment, both headline and core inflation remain below levels consistent with our dual mandate objectives – which most members of the fomc consider to be 2 percent or a bit less on the personal consumption expenditures ( pce ) measure. recent evidence shows that the large amount of slack in the economy has contributed to declining inflation over the past couple of years. i expect this slack to continue to dampen price pressures in the near term. inflation expectations are well - anchored today and we intend to keep it that way. a sustained rise in medium - term inflation expectations would represent a threat to our price stability mandate and would not be tolerated. nevertheless, we always need to be careful about inflation – even in an environment of ample spare capacity. let me focus on one issue, commodity prices, for a moment. surely some of the businesses in the audience have faced the challenge of sharply rising oil, food or metal prices in recent months. for example, the spot gsci – a broad measure of commodity prices – has risen more than 35 percent over the past year. this was in train before the upheavals in the middle east and africa raised market concerns about potential disruption to oil supplies, pushing energy prices – though not other commodity prices – still higher. commodity price pressures are pushing measures of headline inflation above measures of core inflation, which, as i mentioned