what determines female autonomy evidence from bangladesh abstract this paper examines the determinants of female autonomy within households in a developing country in particular we investigate the relative contributions of earned versus unearned income in enhancing women s autonomy and the role of employment outside of their husband s farm in a simple theoretical model it is demonstrated that earned income could be more important than unearned income in empowering women using data from rural bangladesh empirical estimations confirm this prediction and also reveal the surprising fact that it is not employment per se but employment outside their husbands farms that contributes to women s autonomy the data also point to the importance of choosing the correct threat point in theoretical analyses of female autonomy

the propagation of monetary policy shocks in a heterogeneous production economy abstract realistic heterogeneity in price rigidity interacts with heterogeneity in sectoral size and input output linkages in the transmission of monetary policy shocks quantitatively heterogeneity in price stickiness is the central driver for real effects input output linkages and consumption shares alter the identity of the most important sectors to the transmission reducing the number of sectors decreases monetary non neutrality with a similar impact response of inflation hence the initial response of inflation to monetary shocks is not sufficient to discriminate across models and ignoring heterogeneous consumption shares and input output linkages identifies the wrong sectors from which the real effects originate

ramsey discounting of ecosystem services most ecosystem services which are essential for human well being are globally declining while the production of consumption goods measured by gdp is still growing to adequately account for this opposite development in public cost benefit analyses it has been proposed based on a two goods extension of the ramsey growth model to apply good specific discount rates for manufactured consumption goods and for ecosystem services using empirical data for ten ecosystem services across five countries and the world at large we estimated the difference between the discount rates for ecosystem services and for manufactured consumption goods in a conservative estimate we found that ecosystem services in all countries should be discounted at rates that are significantly lower than the ones for manufactured consumption goods on global average ecosystem services should be discounted at a rate that is 0 9 pm 0 3 points lower than the one for manufactured consumption goods the difference is larger in less developed countries and smaller in more developed countries this result supports and substantiates the suggestion that public cost benefit analyses should use country specific dual discount rates one for manufactured consumption goods and one for ecosystem services

empirical evidence on inflation expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve abstract we review the main identification strategies and empirical evidence on the role of expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve paying particular attention to the issue of weak identi

evaluating unemployment policies what do the underlying theories tell us the paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories the basic idea is that for the most part different unemployment policy prescriptions rest on different macroeconomic theories and our confidence in the prescriptions should depend at least in part on theories ability to predict some salient stylized facts about unemployment behavior the paper considers four types of policies laissez faire demand management policies supply side policies and structural policies copyright 1995 by oxford university press

reconciling the wage curve and the phillips curve the wage curve is the negative relationship that links wage levels to the unemployment rate it fits accurately with modern non competitive labour market models but goes against a phillips curve modelling because the latter ties wage growth to the unemployment rate in this article we present a comprehensive review of these non competitive models highlighting recent contributions that try to eliminate the possible gap that exists between the concepts of the wage curve on the one hand and the phillips curve on the other copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2005

monetary policy trend inflation and the great moderation an alternative interpretation with positive trend inflation the taylor principle does not guarantee a determinate equilibrium we provide new theoretical results on determinacy in new keynesian models with positive trend inflation and new empirical findings on the federal reserve s reaction function before and after the volcker disinflation to find that i while the fed likely satisfied the taylor principle before volcker the us economy was still subject to self fulfilling fluctuations in the 1970s ii the us economy switched to determinacy during the volcker disinflation and iii the switch reflected changes in the fed s response to macroeconomic variables and the decline in trend inflation jel e12 e23 e31 e32 e52

the gender wage gap and domestic violence three quarters of all violence against women is perpetrated by domestic partners this study exploits exogenous changes in the demand for labor in female dominated industries to estimate the impact of the male female wage gap on domestic violence decreases in the wage gap reduce violence against women consistent with a household bargaining model these findings shed new light on the health production process as well as observed income gradients in health and suggest that in addition to addressing concerns of equity and efficiency pay parity can also improve the health of american women via reductions in violence

the new keynesian phillips curve revisited abstract several authors have questioned the evidence claimed by gali and gertler 1999 and gali et al 2001 that a hybrid version of the new keynesian phillips curve approximates european and us inflation dynamics quite well we re examine the evidence using the vector autoregressive framework and likelihood based methods paying particular attention to the stationary and nonstationary and possibly cointegrated nature of variables involved our results show that the exact as well as the inexact form of the hybrid nkpc are clearly at odds with the european data on the other hand gali and gertler 1999 finding that the inexact hybrid nkpc is a good first approximation to the us inflation dynamics seems less at odds with the data however the assumption of the model that the stochastic term forms a sequence of innovations may be problematic as we find indication of autocorrelation in the estimated residuals the exact form of the hybrid nkpc is firmly rejected by the us data

sticky price models of the business cycle can the contract multiplier solve the persistence problem we construct a quantitative equilibrium model with firms setting prices in a staggered fashion and use it to ask whether monetary shocks can generate business cycle fluctuations these fluctuations include persistent movements in output along with the other defining features of business cycles like volatile investment and smooth consumption we assume that prices are exogenously sticky for a short time persistent output fluctuations require endogenous price stickiness in the sense that firms choose not to change prices much when they can do so we find that for a wide range of parameter values the amount of endogenous stickiness is small thus we find that in a standard quantitative model staggered price setting alone does not generate business cycle fluctuations

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

selection and monetary non neutrality in time dependent pricing models for a given frequency of price adjustment monetary non neutrality is smaller if older prices are disproportionately more likely to change selection for the age of prices provides a complete characterization of price setting frictions in time dependent models selection for older prices is weaker and non neutralities are larger if the hazard function of price adjustment is less strongly increasing selection is weaker if there is heterogeneity in price stickiness finally selection is weaker if durations of price spells are more variable in particular the taylor 1979 model exhibits maximal selection for older prices whereas the calvo 1983 model exhibits no selection

menu costs and phillips curves this paper develops a model of a monetary economy in which individual firms are subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks as well as general inflation sellers can change price only by incurring a real menu cost we calibrate this cost and the variance and autocorrelation of the idiosyncratic shock using a new u s data set of individual prices due to klenow and kryvtsov the prediction of the calibrated model for the effects of high inflation on the frequency of price changes accords well with international evidence from various studies the model is also used to conduct numerical experiments on the economy s response to various shocks in none of the simulations we conducted did monetary shocks induce large or persistent real responses

price setting with menu cost for multi product firms we model the decisions of a multiproduct firm that faces a fixed menu cost once it is paid the firm can adjust the price of all its products we characterize analytically the steady state firm s decisions in terms of the structural parameters the variability of the flexible prices the curvature of the profit function the size of the menu cost and the number of products sold we provide expressions for the steady state frequency of adjustment the hazard rate of price adjustments and the size distribution of price changes all in terms of the structural parameters we study analytically the impulse response of aggregate prices and output to a monetary shock the size of the output response and its duration both increase with the number of products they more than double as the number of products goes from 1 to 10 quickly converging to the response of taylor s staggered price model

gender and say a model of household behaviour with endogenously determined balance of power the evidence that the same total income can lead a household to choose different consumption vectors depending on who brings in how much of the income has led to an effort to replace the standard unitary model of the household with the collective model which recognizes that the husband and the wife may have different preferences and depending on the balance of power between them the household may choose differently one weakness of this new literature is that it fails to recognize that the household s choice could in turn influence the balance of power once this two way relation between choice and power is recognized we are forced to confront some new questions concerning how to model the household this paper tries to answer these by defining a household equilibrium examining its game theoretic properties and drawing out its testable implications it is shown for instance that once we allow for dynamic interaction a household can exhibit inefficient behavior and that for a certain class of parameters children will be less likely to work in a household where power is evenly balanced than one in which all power is concentrated in the hands of either the father or the mother the paper also draws out the implications for female labor supply

menu costs and the neutrality of money a model of endogenous price adjustment under money growth is presented firms follow s s pricing policies and price revisions are imperfectly synchronized in the aggregate price stickiness disappears and money is neutral the connection between firm price adjustment and relative price variability in the presence of monetary growth is also investigated the results contrast with those obtained in models with exogenous fixed timing of price adjustment

approximating multisector new keynesian models abstract a three sector model with a suitably chosen distribution of price stickiness can closely approximate the response to aggregate shocks of new keynesian models with a much larger number of sectors allowing for their estimation at much reduced computational cost

the impact of r d activities on exports of german business services enterprises first evidence from a continuous treatment approach this study uses newly available representative data from german business services firms and a continuous treatment approach based on the generalised propensity score to test for a causal effect of r d activities measured by the share of engineers and natural scientists in all employees on the share of exports in total sales we find evidence for a positive and statistically significant but small causal effect this result is in line with the non causal results reported in innovation globalization and firm dynamics lessons for enterprise policy new york routledge 2014 and 137 based on regression models with and without control for unobserved time invariant firm characteristics the bottom line then is that r d activity does matter for success of german business services firms on export markets but not much

intrinsic inflation persistence empirical evidence suggests that inflation determination is not purely forward looking but models of price setting have struggled to rationalize this finding without directly assuming backward looking pricing rules for firms this paper shows that intrinsic inflation persistence can be explained with no deviation from optimizing forward looking behaviour if prices that have remained fixed for longer are more likely to be changed than those set recently a relationship between the probability of price adjustment and the duration of a price spell is shown to imply a simple hybrid phillips curve including lagged and expected inflation which is estimated using macroeconomic data

inflation stabilization and welfare the case of a distorted steady state this paper considers the appropriate stabilization objectives for monetary policy in a microfounded model with staggered price setting rotemberg and woodford 1997 and woodford 2002 have shown that under certain conditions a local approximation to the expected utility of the representative household in a model of this kind is related inversely to the expected discounted value of a conventional quadratic loss function in which each period s loss is a weighted average of squared deviations of inflation and an output gap measure from their optimal values zero however those derivations rely on an assumption of the existence of an output or employment subsidy that offsets the distortion due to the market power of monopolistically competitive price setters so that the steady state under a zero inflation policy involves an efficient level of output here we show how to dispense with this unappealing assumption so that a valid linear quadratic approximation to the optimal policy problem is possible even when the steady state is distorted to an arbitrary extent allowing for tax distortions as well as market power and when as a consequence it is necessary to take account of the effects of stabilization policy on the average level of output we again obtain a welfare theoretic loss function that involves both inflation and an appropriately defined output gap though the degree of distortion of the steady state affects both the weights on the two stabilization objectives and the definition of the welfare relevant output gap in the light of these results we reconsider the conditions under which complete price stability is optimal and find that they are more restrictive in the case of a distorted steady state we also consider the conditions under which pure randomization of monetary policy can be welfare improving and find that this is possible in the case of a sufficiently distorted steady state though the parameter values required are probably not empirically realistic

partial adjustment and staggered price setting this paper compares taylor style staggered price setting to partial adjustment of prices or calvo staggering in a small optimizing is lm model in contrast to the overwhelming perception in the literature the models are not similar for most parameterizations in particular the dynamic response of the economy to shocks is quite different in the two models and the welfare cost of price rigidity is eight or more times larger in the calvo model than in the taylor model for typical calibrations suggestions for calibrations under which the models are more similar are also presented

optimal monetary policy with imperfect common knowledge we study optimal nominal demand policy in a flexible price economy with monopolistic competition where firms have imperfect common knowledge about the shocks hitting the economy information imperfections emerge endogenously because firms are assumed to have finite shannon capacity to process information we then ask how policy that minimizes a quadratic objective in output and prices depends on firms processing capacity when price setting decisions of firms are strategic complements we find that policy should nominally accommodate white noise mark up shocks for a large range of capacity values this fi nding is robust to the policy maker observing shocks imperfectly or being uncertain about firms processing capacity when mark up shocks are persistent accommodation may even have to increase in the medium term but has to decrease in the long run thereby generating a hump shaped price response and a slow reduction in output instead when prices are strategic substitutes policy tends to react with nominal demand contractions to mark up shocks in addition there might exist discontinuities between common knowledge equilibria and equilibria with small amounts of imperfect common knowledge

five facts about prices a reevaluation of menu cost models are price decreases 3 the frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not 4 the frequency of price change is highly seasonal it is highest in the first quarter and then declines 5 we find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products we show that the first second and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu cost model whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not

counterinflationary policy in a unionised economy with nonsynchronised wage setting a model of the determination of wages and employment in a unionised economy with nonsynchronised wage setting is presented in this paper it is shown that a monetary deflation can lead to prolonged unemployment even though the unions act rationally and with full information about the change in policy the model generates a statistical phillips curve in which the rate of change of money wages depends on the anticipated growth rate of the money supply and on disequilibrium unemployment conventional incomes policies are shown to have desirable social effects but run counter to the perceived self interest of the trade unions and are therefore likely to be resisted taxes on wage increases have desirable long run effects but do not appear able to reduce the transitional unemployment costs of monetary deflation

do spouses realise cooperative gains experimental evidence from rural uganda summary we use experimental data from variants of public good games to test for household efficiency among married couples in rural uganda spouses frequently do not maximise surplus from cooperation and perform better when women are in charge of allocating the common pool women contribute less to this household common pool than men and opportunism is widespread these results cast doubts on many models of household decision making experimental results are correlated with socio economic attributes and suggest that assortative matching improves household efficiency developing non cooperative household models sensitive to the context specificity of gender relations emerges as a promising future research agenda

does the law of one price hold in a high inflation environment a tale of two cities in turkey this study addresses the price convergence in two cities in turkey istanbul and ankara using annual data over the three quarters of the twentieth century 1922 1998 characterized by prevailing high inflation rates for most of the period in contrast to the rest of the literature addressing convergence in price levels with a typical result of extremely slow convergence rates at best we argue that convergence is much easier detected in growth rates rather than levels of prices we suggest using the bounds testing procedure of pesaran et al 2001 for this purpose we find a clear cut evidence on the existence of a common driving force behind inflation dynamics in istanbul and ankara a finding that is in contrast with the results typically reported in related literature

exports and profitability first evidence for german manufacturing firms using unique recently released nationally representative high quality longitudinal data at the enterprise level for germany this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between exports and profitability it documents that the positive profitability differential of exporters compared to non exporters is statistically significant though rather small when observed firm characteristics and unobserved firm specific effects are controlled for in contrast to nearly all empirical studies on the relationship between productivity and exports we do not find any evidence for selfselection of more profitable firms into export markets due to the sampling frame of the data used we cannot test the hypothesis that firms which start exporting perform better in the years after the start than their counterparts which do not start instead we use a newly developed continuous treatment approach and show that exporting improves the profitability almost over the whole range of the export sales ratio only firms that generate 90 percent and more of their total sales abroad do not benefit from exporting in terms of an increased rate of profit this means that the usually observed higher productivity of exporters is not completely absorbed by the extra costs of exporting or by higher wages paid by internationally active firms

state dependent or time dependent pricing does it matter for recent u s inflation in the 1988 2004 micro data collected by the u s bureau of labor statistics for the cpi price changes are frequent every 4 7 months depending on the treatment of sale prices and large in absolute value on the order of 10 the size and timing of price changes varies considerably for a given item but the size and probability of a price change are unrelated to the time since the last price change movements in aggregate inflation reflect movements in the size of price changes rather than the fraction of items changing price due to offsetting movements in the fraction of price increases and decreases neither leading time dependent models taylor or calvo nor 1 st generation state dependent models match all of these facts some 2 nd generation state dependent models however appear broadly consistent with the empirical patterns

price adjustments in a general model of state dependent pricing we study the distribution of retail price adjustments under the assumption that firms are more likely to adjust their prices when doing so is more valuable our setup nests calvo 1983 at one extreme and a fixed menu cost model at the other all parameterizations are ranked by a measure of state dependence high state dependence implies counterfactually that there are no small price changes and that the variance of price changes falls sharply with trend inflation the parameterization that best fits microdata has low state dependence implying a phillips curve coefficient 60 as large as that of the calvo model but is nonetheless well behaved at high inflation rates

inertial inflation indexation and price stickiness evidence from brazil abstract this paper evaluates the inertial inflation hypothesis for brazil the hypothesis posits that indexation created a feedback mechanism such that one time supply shocks were fully transmitted into permanent changes in inflation a theoretical model is used to show that this outcome is based on the assumption of perfect price flexibility however with price stickiness indexation does not produce inertial inflation the degree of inertia is then compared for two periods one without indexation 1945 1963 and one with indexation 1969 1985 finally vector autoregressive representations are estimated for the latter period allowing for price stickiness the empirical results do not support the hypothesis

shared agency the dominant spouse s impact on education expenditure summary in this paper we consider whether it is the gender of the decision maker or the extent of agency that they wield that is crucial to increasing household welfare this is an important question as development policy is often formed on the basis that placing resources in the hands of women results in greater household welfare indonesia provides the ideal opportunity to study this issue because it is home to ethnic groups with very different gender norms from male dominance the patrilineal batak to female dominance the matrilineal minangkabau using ifls data for three rounds we consider the impact of decision making by the dominant spouse on household expenditure on education we find that in indonesia when the dominant spouse male or female has sole control of decision making there is an overall negative impact on education expenditure this leads us to argue that it is more important to consider the issue of spousal dominance than to wholly focus on gender

the cross sectional distribution of price stickiness implied by aggregate data we provide evidence on three mechanisms that can reconcile frequent individual price changes with sluggish aggregate price dynamics to that end we estimate a semistructural model that can extract

estimation of limited dependent variable models with dummy endogenous regressors applied economists have long struggled with the question of how to accommodate binary endogenous regressors in models with binary and nonnegative outcomes i argue here that much of the difculty with limited dependent variables comes from a focus on structural parameters such as index coefcients instead of causal effects once the object of estimation is taken to be the causal effect of treatment several simple strategies are available these include conventional two stage least squares multiplicative models for conditional means linear approximation of nonlinear causal models models for distribution effects and quantile regression with an endogenous binary regressor the estimation strategies discussed in the article are illustrated by using multiple births to estimate the effect of childbearing on employment status and hours of work

a dynamic economy with costly price adjustments this paper studies a general equilibrium model of a dynamic economy with menu costs each firm s productivity is exposed to idiosyncratic and aggregate productivity shocks around a trend and the money supply to monetary shocks around a trend all consumption pricing and production decisions are based on optimizing behavior there exists a staggered markov perfect equilibrium with prices determined by a two sided s s markup strategy the paper analyzes the optimal markup strategy and investigates the dynamics of the price index and the aggregate output the welfare consequences of the uncertain aggregate productivity and money supply are also examined

endogenous time dependent rules and inflation inertia in this paper we endogenize fixed price time dependent rules to examine the output effects of monetary disinflation we derive the optimal rules in and out of inflationary steady states and develop a methodology to aggregate individual pricing rules which vary through time because of strategic complementarities we have to solve both problems simultaneously this allows us to reassess the output costs of monetary disinflations including aspects such as the roles of the initial level of inflation and of the degree of strategic complementarity in price finally we relax the strict assumption of pure time dependent rules by allowing price setters to re evaluate their rules at the time disinflation is announced

spousal control and intra household decision making an experimental study in the philippines i elicit causal effects of spousal observability and communication on financial choices of married individuals in the philippines when choices are private men put money into their personal accounts when choices are observable men commit money to consumption for their own benefit when required to communicate men put money into their wives account these strong treatment effects on men but not women appear related more to control than to gender men whose wives control household savings respond more strongly to the treat ment and women whose husbands control savings exhibit the same response changes in information and communication interact with underlying control to produce mutable gender specific outcomes

monetary targets real exchange rates and macroeconomic stability abstract in this paper i develop a model to determine the optimal degree of flexibility in attaining monetary targets in an economy that is affected by shocks in the labor and financial markets i then simulate the model to assess the optimal degree of monetary policy flexibility in spain a country that has adopted monetary targets rigidly since 1978 i show that the model supports the policy choice of that country i also show that the monetary authorities should attribute more importance to real exchange rate movements in choosing their policies if the spanish economy becomes more open to international trade or if the labor market becomes more flexible

services inflation dynamics and persistence puzzle in brazil a time varying parameter approach this article analyses services inflation dynamics in brazil focusing on the services inflation persistence puzzle for monthly data from january 2004 to february 2016 we apply a time varying para

the return of the liquidity effect a study of the short run relation between money growth and interest rates in this article i use band pass filters to investigate the short run relationship between money growth and interest rates i find a negative correlation between short run movements in money growth and interest rates which i interpret as evidence that the liquidity effect dominates the anticipated inflation effect

the real effects of monetary shocks in sticky price models a sufficient statistic approach abstract we prove that the ratio of kurtosis to the frequency of price changes is a sufficient statistic for the real effects of monetary shocks measured by the cumulated output response following the shock the sufficient statistic result holds in a large class of models which includes taylor 1980 calvo 1983 reis 2006 golosov and lucas 2007 nakamura and steinsson 2010 midrigan 2011 and alvarez and lippi 2014 several models in this class are able to account for the positive excess kurtosis of the size distribution of price changes that appears in the data we review empirical measures of kurtosis and frequency and conclude that a model that successfully matches the microevidence on kurtosis and frequency produces real effects that are about four times larger than in the golosov lucas model and about 30 percent below those of the calvo model we discuss the robustness of our results to changes in the setup including small inflation and leptokurtic cost shocks jel e23 e31

output persistence from monetary shocks with staggered prices or wages under a taylor rule we analytically examine output persistence from monetary shocks in a dsge model with staggered prices or wages under a taylor rule surprisingly while taylor style staggering never yields persistence calvo style staggering of wages does generate persistence under decreasing returns to labour c 2009 elsevier b v all rights reserved

intra household resource allocation an inferential approach if household income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand with survey data on family health and nutrition in brazil the equality of parental income effects is rejected unearned income in the hands of a mother has a bigger effect on her family s health than income under the control of a father for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger the common preference or neoclassical model of the household is rejected if unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same equality of the ratios cannot be rejected there is also evidence for gender preference mothers prefer to devote resources to improving the nutritional status of their daughters fathers to sons

trend inflation wage and price rigidities and productivity growth abstract what are the steady state implications of inflation in a general equilibrium model with real per capita output growth and staggered nominal price and wage contracts surprisingly a benchmark calibration implies an optimal inflation rate of 1 9 percent the analysis also shows that trend inflation has important effects on the economy when combined with nominal contracts and real output growth steady state output and welfare losses are quantitatively important even for low values of trend inflation further nominal wage contracting is found to be quantitatively more important than nominal price contracting in generating the results this conclusion does not arise from price dispersion per se but from an effect of nominal output growth on the optimal markup of monopolistically competitive labour suppliers finally accounting for productivity growth is found to be important for calculating the welfare costs of inflation indeed the presence of 2 percent productivity growth increases the welfare costs of inflation in the benchmark specification by a factor of four relative to the no growth case

price wage dynamics and inflation in socialist economies empirical models for hungary and poland this article analyzes the determinants of open inflation in transitional socialist economies with reference to recent experience in hungary and poland a simple inflation model is centered on the transmission process and on the short run dynamics of inflation further incorporating a number of features specific to socialist economies and working with quarterly data dynamic price and wage equations are estimated the estimated equations allow satisfactory exploration of the role and weight of foreign prices and domestic factors in propagating inflation foreign prices matter but developments on the cost side are critical in relating exogenous policy driven adjustments to the price level to increases in the rate of inflation the absence of conventional market based equilibrating mechanisms requires that nominal anchors particularly wage restraints feature prominently in any stabilization program adopted by reforming socialist economies copyright 1992 by oxford university press

monetary non neutrality in a multisector menu cost model empirical evidence suggests that as much as one third of the u s business cycle is due to nominal shocks we calibrate a multisector menu cost model using new evidence on the cross sectional distribution of the frequency and size of price changes in the u s economy we augment the model to incorporate intermediate inputs we show that the introduction of heterogeneity in the frequency of price change triples the degree of monetary non neutrality generated by the model we furthermore show that the introduction of intermediate inputs raises the degree of monetary non neutrality by another factor of three without adversely affecting the model s ability to match the large average size of price changes a single sector model with a frequency of price change equal to the median rather than the mean generates monetary non neutrality similar to that in our multisector model our multisector model with intermediate inputs generates variation in real output in response to calibrated aggregate nominal shocks that can account for roughly 23 of the u s business cycle

staggering the optimal monetary rule and persistence abstract the purpose of this paper is to show that persistence is not an attribute that derives from the characteristics of wage and price setting alone the structure of demand the monetary rule and the welfare loss function are also crucial determinants of the time series characteristics of the model

unemployment as excess supply of labor implications for wage and price inflation abstract the introduction of both market clearing wages and nominal rigidities on wage setting can be used to rationalize unemployment as excess supply of labor in the new keynesian model as a result wage inflation dynamics are forward looking and depend negatively on the rate of unemployment moreover both price inflation and wage inflation evolve as indicated by equations equivalent to those obtained in erceg et al 2000 though with different slope coefficients in an equal volatility comparison the model with unemployment conveys less price stickiness and more wage stickiness

do women supply more public goods than men preliminary experimental evidence from matrilineal and patriarchal societies francine d blau cornell university janet m currie columbia university charles a holt university of virginia steffen andersen porcelaeenshaven 16 a 1 dk 2000 frederiksberg tel 45 3815 2591 fax 45 3815 2576 e mail sa eco cbs dk erwin bulte warandelaan 2 5037 ab tilburg the netherlands tel 31 13 466 2707 erwin bulte wur nl uri gneezy otterson hall room 4s136 9500 gilman dr 0553 la jolla ca 92093 0553 phone 858 534 4312 fax 858 534 0745 ugneezy ucsd edu john a list corresponding author 1126 east 59

measuring the effects of preservation on farm profits in a continuous treatment setting abstractdespite billions of dollars of public appropriations to state purchase of development rights pdr programmes there has been limited evaluation of the effects of these investments on the economic performance of preserved farms this article estimates dose response functions to evaluate the effects of enrolment in new jersey s pdr programme on farm profitability the generalized propensity score method in a continuous treatment setting is used to address selection bias arising from voluntary programme participation treatment effects are measured across treatment levels to determine whether farm profitability is affected differently across levels of programme participation our findings reveal that relative to unpreserved farms profit per acre tends to increase along lower treatment levels the profit per acre of preserved farms in the 1 40 treatment range is on average 407 higher than that of unpreserved farms in the full sample positive profit differentials averaging between 317 and 472

sluggish responses of prices and inflation to monetary shocks in an inventory model of money demand we examine the responses of prices and inflation to monetary shocks in an inventory theoretic model of money demand we show that the price level responds sluggishly to an exogenous increase in the money stock because the dynamics of households money inventories leads to a partially offsetting endogenous reduction in velocity we also show that inflation responds sluggishly to an exogenous increase in the nominal interest rate because changes in monetary policy affect the real interest rate in a quantitative example we show that this nominal sluggishness is substantial and persistent if inventories in the model are calibrated to match u s households holdings of m2

surprise party estimating the consequences of unexpected presidential election results alesina s quarterly journal of economics 102 651 678 1987 influential model of presidential elections with ideologically motivated parties attributes higher growth and lower unemployment under democratic presidents to the surprise inflation a democratic victory entails in contrast to the published literature we test this hypothesis using calcula tions of presidential election surprises consistent with the assumption of rational economic actors we confront the econometric complications attending a time series approach tak ing into account economic growth dynamics we ultimately fail to confirm the hypothesis that the level of uncertainty associated with presidential election results has an effect on economic outcomes

disentangling bargaining power from individual and household level to institutions evidence on women s position in ethiopia summary women s bargaining power is generally analyzed only with individual level and household level variables we add a third level namely institutional bargaining power we define this as bargaining power which one party freely derives from unequal social norms in the bargaining literature there is a common paradoxical finding namely that more access to and control over individual resources sometimes decreases rather than increases women s bargaining outcomes with household survey data from ethiopia and making use of multilevel modeling and an aggregate model with interaction terms we suggest that this paradoxical effect can be explained by very unequal gender norms gendered institutions at the group level in our case we used ethnic groups to show that in groups where gender norms are very unequal individual and household level bargaining power variables effects are mediated by ethnic gendered institutions a policy implication of our findings is that gender policy may become more effective with shifting the emphasis from a largely individual approach to an institutional approach to support women s empowerment

state dependent pricing and the general equilibrium dynamics of money and output economists have long suggested that nominal product prices are changed infrequently because of fixed costs in such a setting optimal price adjustment should depend on the state of the economy yet while widely discussed statedependent pricing has proved difficult to incorporate into macroeconomic models this paper develops a new tractable theoretical state dependent pricing framework we use it to study how optimal pricing depends on the persistence of monetary shocks the elasticities of labor supply and goods demand and the interest sensitivity of money demand

the phillips curve the persistence of inflation and the lucas critique evidence from exchange rate regimes comment we present evidence from the united states and the united kingdom that the persistence of price inflation is significantly higher under managed exchange rate regimes than under gold based fixed exchange rate regimes these differences are also reflected in expectations augmented phillips curves we use a two country macro model with forward looking price setters to demonstrate that higher monetary accommodation of inflation and exchange rate accommodation of inflation differentials increase inflation persistence the evidence does not contradict this hypothesis it supports the hypothesis of forward looking price setters and highlights the empirical significance of the lucas critique jel e31 e42 f33

altruism in the family and selfishness in the market place adam smith argued in a famous passage that people are selfish in their market transactions it is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest we address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages 1937 p 14 in an earlier study he said with irony we are not ready to suspect any person of being defective in selfishness 1853 p 446 selfishness in market transactions has been assumed in practically all subsequent discussions of the economic system objections were dismissed with vague allusions to human nature or with an assertion that altruism loses out to selfishness in the struggle to survive in the market sector yet altruism is generally recognized to be important within a family again adam smith said