“The conference was more about what we don’t know, about a candid willingness to analyze what we don’t know,” said Lucrezia Reichlin, a professor at London Business School and former director general of research at the European Central Bank. “It did not really inspire confidence” in monetary policy.

The formal program, on “Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy,” was devoted to the vexing reality that inflation in recent years has not behaved as economists predicted. The basic paradigm, known as the Phillips Curve, is that inflation falls as unemployment rises, and rises as unemployment falls. But inflation did not fall as much as expected during the Great Recession, and it has remained surprisingly weak during the recovery.

Over the course of two days, the invited academics argued that the real story was more complicated. One study, for example, presented evidence that prices fall more slowly during recessions because cash-short firms actually tend to increase prices in the face of declining demand for their products.

“Once you integrate all these dynamics, it may turn out that life is not that simple,” said Eric M. Leeper, an economist at Indiana University and co-author of a paper arguing that central banks need better economic models.

Central bankers, however, have shown little interest in paradigm shifts. Several said that the basic understanding of inflation, while obviously imperfect, remains more functional than any alternatives.

“I don’t think the folks at the Fed are of a mind to redesign monetary policy just because of what happened during the crisis,” said Jon Faust, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and a former adviser to the Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, and her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke.