international evidence on output inflation tradeoffs a bootstrap analysis abstract a bootstrap analysis of existing data on international output inflation tradeoffs is performed in contrast to some previous empirical work the results of the bootstrap analysis strongly support lucas 1973 rational expectations model of the natural rate hypothesis

optimal state dependent rules credibility and inflation inertia abstract we use a state dependent model where pricing rules are optimal to examine the costs of a money based disinflation under various assumptions about the credibility of the policy change our analysis allows us to relate actual credibility and future inflation inertia to the asymmetry of the price deviation distribution an important implication of our state dependent setting is that disinflation can be attained without substantial cost even in a situation of low credibility provided that a mechanism of price alignment eliminates the asymmetry of the price deviation distribution we also develop an analytical framework for analyzing intermediate imperfect credibility cases

the changing relationship between aggregate price and output the british experience over the past two and a half decades great britain has exhibited the most noticeable increase in inflation variability among the ten major noncommunist industrialized countries in addition there has been an apparent worsening in the output inflation tradeoff this paper attempts to identify and empirically assess possible causes of the deterioration in the british output inflation tradeoff in the context of a new classical type model supply side shocks can cause an increase in the inflation rate and a decrease in real output and it is estimatedthat such shocks interacted with inflation variability to reduce real output roughly 3 3 percent between the period 1957 1968 and the period 1969 1980 also contributing to the deterioration in the output inflation tradeoff it is estimated that the decline in the natural rate of real output due to inflation variability as hypothesized by milton friedman amounted to about 2 3 to 2 5 percent between these two subperiods this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the peter principle a theory of decline some have observed that individuals perform worse after being promoted the peter principle which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence suggests that something is fundamentally misaligned in the promotion process this view is unnecessary and inconsistent with the data below it is argued that ability appears lower after promotion purely as a statistical matter being promoted is evidence that a standard has been met regression to the mean implies that future ability will be lower on average firms optimally account for the regression bias in making promotion decisions but the effect is never eliminated rather than evidence of a mistake the peter principle is a necessary consequence of any promotion rule furthermore firms that take it into account appropriately adopt an optimal strategy usually firms inflate the promotion criterion to offset the peter principle effect and the more important the transitory component is relative to total variation in ability the larger

nash implementation a complete characterization the authors extend e maskin s results on nash implementation first they establish a condition that is both necessary and sufficient for nash implementability if there are three or more agents the case covered by maskin s sufficiency result second and more important they examine the two agent case for which there existed no general sufficiency results the two agent model is the leading case for applications to contracting and bargaining for this case too they establish a condition that is both necessary and sufficient the authors use their theorems to derive simpler sufficiency conditions that are applicable in a wide variety of economic environments copyright 1990 by the econometric society

inflation dynamics and the output inflation trade off international panel data evidence we explore the impact of inflation and its variability on the output inflation trade off using a unified single step approach in a panel data context a limitation of earlier empirical approaches is that they focus on either cross country or country by country time series analyses this paper employs a dynamic heterogeneous panel data specification and uses an all encompassing estimation framework that accounts for parameter heterogeneity cross sectional dependence dynamics and non stationarity our sample covers 60 countries from 1970 to 2010 while inflation variability reduces the trade off for specific periods and country groups an unambiguous and more pronounced negative relation emerges between the inflation rate and the responsiveness of real output to nominal shocks the findings are in line with the new keynesian view of a negative association between the rate of inflation and the output inflation trade off as well as with the observed flattening of the phillips curve over the past decades

reinterpreting the role of inflation in politico economic models the author attempting to analyze the interplay between politics and economics is faced with a large number of problems ranging from an always too small and idiosyncratic data set to the lack of any generally accepted theory of the process which has testable implications my aims have been 1 to show that past studies have typically treated inflation in an extremely naive way disregarding the fact that it may have political pluses if unanticipated and 2 to test the sensitivity of established formulations to what i believe is the more useful view of voter behavior given in model ii since model i and model ii represent polar extremes of amnesiac and eidetic behavior tests of intermediate lag structures are clearly in order because of administration peculiarities however lost data points will pose a serious problem

anticipated inflation the frequency of transactions and the slope of the phillips curve this paper examines the effects of expected inflation on the responsiveness of output to nominal disturbances in the framework of a localized markets model the mechanism described in the theoretical part of the paper is that expected inflation has a positive effect on the transaction frequency which in turn increases the flow of price information across markets more information implies less misperception of monetary shocks as relative shifts in excess demand resulting in lower sensitivity of real output to these socks the empirical implication of this proposition namely that expected inflation reduces the coefficient of nominal shocks in an output equation is tested first using data across countries and then with time series data from the united states the first test uses lucas s and alberro s estimates of phillips curve coefficients from different countries and the corresponding average inflation rates the second test involves data from the post world war ii period it uses nominal rates of return on treasury bills and corporate bonds as measures of anticipated inflation and barro s estimates of unanticipated money in general results in both tests provide support stronger than expected for the implication of the theory this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

whose opinion counts implementation by sortition abstract sortition is the process of selecting decision makers or senators by a lottery we introduce sortition in implementation theory by augmenting a mechanism with a kleroterion or lottery machine p that selects the senators an outcome is implemented after consulting only the opinions of the senators we call the corresponding notion of implementation as p implementation and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for p implementation our main result is that in economic environments every nash implementable social choice rule scr is also p implementable if p selects every quartet of players with positive probability and always selects at least three senators we apply this result to two kleroteria oligarchic democracy and random sampling in economic environments every nash implementable scr can be implemented by oligarchic democracy of three oligarchs in economic environments every nash implementable scr can be implemented by randomly selecting four senators

maskin s theorem with limited veto power abstract we weaken the no veto power condition of maskin maskin e 1999 nash equilibrium and welfare optimality rev econ stud 66 23 38 to limited veto power and prove that any monotonic social choice rule is nash implementable if it satisfies this weaker condition the result is obtained by using the canonical maskin mechanism without modification an immediate corollary is that the weak core is nash implementable in any coalitional game environment an example is given to show that the strong core need not be implementable even when it is monotonic

expected monetary changes and relative prices a look at evidence from the stock market at the heart of the natural rate theory is the assumption that fully perceived monetary growth is neutral with respect to relative price changes unfortunately there have been few attempts to test this assumption directly because the belief that active contracyclical monetary policies are not superior to friedman s constant growth rule rests upon the assumption that expected monetary changes have neutral relative price effects more evidence is needed on whether such changes are in fact neutral to this end we test the hypothesis that only the unexpected components and not the expected components of monetary changes affect relative price changes by looking at the stock market testing is done on a modification of the well known mean variance capital asset pricing model the capm specifically we modify the capm to allow for differential stock returns depending upon expected and unexpected monetary growth rates section ii explains the basic model used to test for non neutral relative price effects of monetary change section iii deals with the empirical definitions of expected and unexpected money growth section iv discusses the basic data while sections v and vi make neutrality tests of monetary growth using actual expected revisions in expected and unexpected money growths the last part summarizes the paper

learning from coarse information biased contests and career profiles an organization s promotion decision between two workers is modelled as a problem of boundedly rational learning about ability the decision maker can bias noisy rank order contests sequentially thereby changing the information they convey the optimal final period bias favours the leader reinforcing his likely ability advantage when optimally biased rank order information is a sufficient statistic for cardinal information the leader is favoured in every period in other environments bias in early periods may i favour the early loser ii be optimal even when the workers are equally rated and iii reduce the favoured worker s promotion chances this paper presents a model of boundedly rational learning by an organization the aims are to represent in a simple form the costs of gathering processing or transmitting information and to analyse their implications for the procedures selected to handle information as well as for the decisions actually made like other recent work on the internal organization of firms this work explores to what extent organizational structure and behaviour as well as organizational performance can be explained by adaptation to the costs associated with information in the learning model we formulate the decision maker not only selects a rule specifying what action to take as a function of his observations but also chooses sequentially the information partitions generating those observations this general problem is interpreted in the context of an organization which needs to make an important promotion decision and which attempts to maximize the value of the information generated during the observation periods that precede the decision one of the motivations for this analysis was the finding by organizational sociologists that earnings and promotions in the later stages of a worker s career are strongly correlated with earnings and promotions in the early stages kanter 1977 rosenbaum 1984 later success is positively associated with early success even when one controls for the effect of observable characteristics likely to affect performance such as education one obvious source of this correlation is differences in ability that persist over time and that are not captured by the observable covariates in this paper we focus on differences in ability which are initially unobservable by organizations and their workers as well as by researchers we present a simple model of an organization trying to learn about differences in ability and show

new evidence on the output inflation trade off from developing economies the case of the cfa franc zone this aim of this paper is to give a contribution to the debate on whether output inflation trade offs are negatively influenced by the mean of inflation as postulated by new keynesians or by the variability of inflation as postulated by neo classical economists to remove any concerns about the arbitrariness of the choice of the sample the analysis will focus on a group of countries belonging to the same currency union the franc zone the results do not provide conclusive evidence on either theory as it was found that there existed a negative relation between the output inflation trade offs and the mean of inflation on the one hand and the variability of inflation on the other

the time varying parameter model for modeling changing conditional variance the case of the lucas hypothesis the main econometric issue in testing the lucas 1973 hypothesis in a time series context is estimation of the forecast error variance conditional on past information the conditional variance may vary through time as monetary policy evolves and agents are obliged to infer its present state under the assumption that a monetary policy regime is continuously changing a time varying parameter model is proposed for the monetary growth function based on kalman filtering estimation of recursive forecast errors and their conditional variances the lucas hypothesis is tested for the u s economy 1964 1 1985 4 using monetary growth as aggregate demand variable the lucas hypothesis is rejected in favor of friedman s 1977 hypothesis the conditional variance of monetary growth affects real output directly not through the coefficients on the forecast error term in the lucas type output equation

on nash implementation of social choice correspondences abstract in this paper we extend danilov s conditions for nash implementation to weak preferences over an arbitrary set of alternatives we show that a certain condition of strong monotonicity is necessary for nash implementation if the domain of preferences is sufficiently large furthermore in any preference domain of weak orders it is also sufficient for nash implementation if there are at least three agents

inflation and the distribution of price changes this paper reconsiders the empirical evidence connecting inflation to its higher order moments in particular we examine the statistical properties of the observed positive correlation between the sample mean and the sample cross sectional skewness of price changes this correlation has attracted substantial attention over the years and has recently been the focal point of a debate among macroeconomists we show that the sample mean skewness correlation suffers from a small sample bias that accounts for the entirety of the observed correlation in other words we establish that one of the stylized facts in the literature on aggregate price behavior need not be a fact at all

inflation inflation uncertainty and relative price dispersion evidence from bivariate garch m models abstract one potential real effect of inflation is its influence on the dispersion of relative prices in the economy menu cost models generally imply that higher trend inflation will increase price dispersion in contrast signal extraction models predict that increased inflation uncertainty will raise relative price dispersion existing empirical studies do not distinguish between these separate hypotheses we constuct a bivariate garch m model of inflation and relative price dispersion to test these differing explanations in a single model and find that inflation uncertainty dominates trend inflation as a predictor of relative price dispersion

promotion turnover and preemptive wage offers this paper examines the strategic promotion and wage decisions of employers when employees may be more valuable to competing firms competing employers must incur a cost to learn the quality of their match with a manager promotion signals that workers are potentially valuable managers in other firms and so can lead to turnover to preempt competition for a manager an employer may offer a wage high enough to discourage competitors from acquiring information and bidding up the wage further or hiring the worker away this transfers wages from good workers to bad more costly information acquisition yields greater expected lifetime wages copyright 1993 by american economic association

incentives and implementation in marriage markets with externalities abstract we study the implementability of stable correspondences in marriage markets with externalities we prove that contrary to what happens in markets without externalities no stable revelation mechanism makes a dominant strategy for the agents on one side of the market to reveal their preferences however the stable correspondence is implementable in nash equilibrium

implementation via nash equilibria this paper is concerned with a problem of implementation of a given social choice correspondence the authors introduces an essential monotonicity condition and show that any implementable social choice correspondence satisfies this condition conversely in a case of three or more participants any essentially monotone social choice correspondence is implementable in a case of two participants the essential monotonicity condition must be completed by a requirement that the social choice correspondence is close to an individually rational correspondence copyright 1992 by the econometric society

the variability of output inflation tradeoffs abstract this paper examines the nature of the variability of the output inflation tradeoff in the united states canada and the united kingdom a stochastic coefficient regression specification is used to allow for the possibility that the tradeoff varies continuously over time where our estimates show evidence of variability in the terms of the output inflation tradeoff we examine the extent to which such variability might be associated with period by period variation in the variance of inflation and aggregate demand along lines suggested by the new classical models of robert lucas

job allocation rules and sorting efficiency experimental outcomes in a peter principle environment an important issue in personnel economics is the design of efficient job allocation rules firms often use promotions both to sort workers across jobs and to provide them with incentives however the peter principle states that employees output tends to fall after a promotion lazear 2004 suggests that self selection may improve job allocation efficiency while preserving incentive effects we reproduce this peter principle in the laboratory and compare the efficiency of a promotion standard with subjects self selecting their task we find no evidence of effort distortion as predicted by theory furthermore we find that when the peter principle is not severe promotion rules often dominate self selection efficiency of task assignment results are consistent with imperfect appraisal of transitory ability and a lack of strategic behavior

adaptive expectations and the variance hypothesis abstract it is shown that lucas variance hypothesis on output inflation tradeoff is consistent even with adaptive price expectations hence empirical evidence of the model need not support the rational expectations natural rate hypothesis

the relationship between relative prices and the general price level it is very nearly a truismi amaong neoclassical economists that the public is wont to confuse changes in the general price level with relative price changes correspondingl y one might speak of the independence between the two as one of the central postulates of the neoclassical tradition william stanley jevons was aml ong the first to identify this basic dichotomin economic life as well as to attempt to explain the ordinary citizen s seenming incapacity to understand it

the influence of unanticipated money growth on real output some cross country estimates two major propositions can be deduced from the theories of the business cycle developed in 4 14 15 161 1 monetary growth affects real output only if it is unanticipated 2 the impact on output of unanticipated monetary growth declines the more unpredictable monetary growth becomes proposition 1 has been tested on u k data in 2 3s on u s data in 5 6 7 and on canadian data in 19 the best known but somewhat informal test of proposition 2 is contained in 15 on data from a cross section of eighteen countries l in this paper we apply the method described in 3 to test proposition 1 using data from a range of countries furthermore we develop and discuss a formal method of testing proposition 2 and apply that method to the same data our main conclusion is that neither proposition can be decisively rejected

rational overoptimism and other biases rational agents with differing priors tend to be overoptimistic about their chances of success in particular an agent who tries to choose the action that is most likely to succeed is more likely to choose an action of which he overestimated rather than underestimated the likelihood of success after studying the comparative statics of this mechanism i show that it also causes agents to attribute failure to exogenous factors but success to their own choice of action to disproportionately believe that they will outperform others to overestimate the precision of their estimates and to overestimate their control over the outcome

relative price variability inflation and the allocative efficiency of the price system abstract this paper develops a theory of the relationship between aggregate and relative price variability based on the inability of people even in a rational world to identify permanent changes in relative demands whether caused by real or by monetary variability and relative productivities as soon as they occur the theory implies that the variance of the rate of inflation and the variance of relative price change are positively related although expectations are rational and markets always clear production decisions respond sluggishly to changes in relative prices temporary shocks to relative demands cause prolonged changes in the structure of production available information is used so as to maximize the efficiency of the price system however this efficiency decreases when any of the underlying variances increases this decrease is more pronounced when the production lag is longer

inflation and economic growth a multi country empirical analysis the world eocnomy is currently adjusting to a low inflation regime which has implicastions for the cross country distribution of world growth opportunities in contrast to previous related work which assumes unidirectional causality this paper uses the granger methodology to examine both the direction and pattern of causality between inflation and economic growth in 70 countries using annual data over the period 1960 89 among the conclusions are that first the relationship between inflation and growth is non uniform across countries 40 of countries studied reveal no causality one third exhibit unidirectional causality and about one fifth of countries show bidirectional causality second a vast majority of countries which show either uni or bi directional causality beong to the industrial group and third the low world inflation regime will on balance redistribute real growth opportunities benefit away from the developing countries towards the industrialized countries

reexamination of maskin s theorem on nash implementability abstract we reexamine maskin s theorem by proposing slight modifications on maskin s conditions of monotonicity and no veto power we show that any social choice correspondence scc that satisfies strict monotonicity strict no veto power and unanimity can be implemented in nash equilibria

evidence on inflation output trade off in developing and industrial countries this paper subjects lucas s output inflation trade off study to further empirical investigation the cross country study divides the 111 countries covered into 90 developing countries and 21 advanced countries lucas s proposition is that volatility of aggregate demand growth should reduce the impact of aggregate demand growth on the cyclical output and the implication of this is that there is no output inflation trade off in line with the natural rate theory we employ annual data over periods that fall between 1958 and 1985 in order to conduct the test our findings suggest that lucas s proposition is valid for developed economies but not for developing economies

price and output responsiveness to nominal changes under differential information abstract the paper considers how changes in nominal income are transmitted into price and output changes within a setting where the traditional assumption of instantaneous market clearing costless coordination is given up in favour of a more realistic setting where price decisions are made by numerous agents firms acting independently on their private decentralized information the responsiveness of firm specific prices is considered and it is shown how absolute or nominal price rigidity can be explained building this into a theory of the general price level it is proved that heterogenously perceived nominal changes affect the price level less than proportionally moreover it is shown how a phillips curve relation between inflation and output can be rationalized within the model finally the issue of relative price variability is considered and related to misallocation of economic resources under differential information

on the real effects of short and long run inflation and relative sector price variability some empirical evidence using the kalman filter this paper evaluates empirically the effects of sector relative price variability and short run and long run inflation on the growth rate of real output in the united states since 1947 also permanent and transitory estimates are constructed to evaluate the effects of unanticipated movements in sector relative price on the growth rate of real output the results show a statistically significant inverse relationship beween the growth rate of real output and transitory sector relative price variability and anticipated long run inflation and a direct relationship between the growth rate of real output and unanticipated short run inflation

job assignments signalling and efficiency this article analyzes a model in which information about a worker s ability is only directly revealed to the firm employing the worker other firms however use the worker s job assignment as a signal of ability three results recur throughout the analysis first wage rates tend to be more closely associated with jobs than with ability levels second there is frequently an inefficient assignment of workers to jobs i e even when a firm has complete information about a worker s output third the severity of this inefficiency tends to be negatively correlated with the level of firm specific human capital in the economy

nash implementation in exchange economies with single peaked preferences abstract in exchange economies with single peaked preferences we find that 1 several solutions satisfy theorem 1 of doghmi and ziad doghmi a ziad a 2008 this issue reexamination of maskin s theorem on nash implementability economics letters 2 strict monotonicity is equivalent to maskin monotonicity we examine also the implementation of the weak core in coalitional games

conditional relative price variance and its determinants open economy evidence from germany the authors present empirical tests of two hypothesis derived from an open economy version of the multimarket equilibrium model the first hypothesis holds that the conditional relative price variance is positively related to the variance of domestic monetary and foreign nominal and real shocks the second hypothesis claims a negative impact of an increase in conditional relative price variance on normal output in contrast to earlier studies the authors use direct measures of conditional relative price variance based on arch estimates the authors results show that both hypotheses are consistent with german data copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

conglomerate mergers as defense against the risk of relative price variability this paper studies the effects of the risk of relative price variability on the optimal structure of a firm s cash flows with an application of portfolio theory it is suggested that when relative price risk is greater it is optimal for the management to diversify at the margin and emphasize economies of scale or scope when the risk is smaller conglomerate mergers should therefore be positively associated with relative price risk given the variables affecting mergers as a whole empirical evidence is found to lend support to the theory the inflation rate explains conglomerate mergers even better which suggests that relative price risk may constitute another real resource cost of inflation

interpreting the correlation between inflation and the skewness of relative prices a comment on bryan and cecchetti large literature in macroeconomics has examined how the inflation rate is related to the distribution of relative price changes this work has established a striking fact there is a strong correlation between inflation and the skewness of this distribution when inflation is high the distribution of relative price changes is typically skewed to the right when inflation is low it is skewed to the left the oil shocks of the 1970s are one example of this phenomenon inflation rose while a few goods oil products experienced especially large relative price increases but the inflationskewness correlation is not just a result of oil shock years this fact holds for many time periods and many countries e g vining elwertowski 1976 and ball mankiw 1995 for the united states amano macklem 1997 for canada de abreu lourenco and gruen 1995 for australia bryan and cecchetti 1999 argue that this fact need not be a fact at all because of small sample bias if true this is an important claim it would eliminate an apparently robust stylized fact that might otherwise hold a clue to understanding the causes or effects of inflation we are not however convinced by bryan and cecchetti s assertion our goal in this note is to explain why on its face bryan and cecchetti s claim is puzzling their paper presents a model in which there is an underlying true distribution of price changes and the observed distribution is obtained by sampling a subset of these price changes they show that the skewness of the sample distribution may be correlated with the sample mean even if there is no skewness in the population distribution this model however does not capture the reality of how price indices are constructed it is not the case that there are a large number of sectors and the government computes the cpi by sampling a small number of them instead the government measures prices in all sectors of which there may be a small or large number depending on the level of disaggregation the observed correlation of the mean and skewness is based on the full population of sectors so small sample bias does not appear to be possible because the data used to construct price indices are comprehensive one cannot avoid the conclusion that the inflation skewness correlation is a fact 1 if the idea of small sample bias is not relevant here how should one interpret the numerical simulations presented by bryan and cecchetti the substance of their argument we believe is that it is easy to explain the correlation between inflation and skewness previous authors have worked hard to explain this fact ball and mankiw 1995 propose that this correlation can be explained with menu cost models of price adjustment while balke and wynne 1996 argue that it can be explained by a multisector real business cycle model by contrast bryan and cecchetti generate the inflation skewness correlation in a much simpler model although it would be wrong to interpret their results as showing that the correlation doesn t exist one could plausibly interpret them as showing that this correlation doesn t prove anything as they put it such statistics are not useful in distinguishing sticky from flexible price setting behavior in macroeconomic models to evaluate this argument it helps to step back and review the motivation behind the ball mankiw and balke wynne theories the starting point for these authors is the classical theory of price determination central to this theory is the classical dichotomy relative prices are determined by real factors and the aggregate price level is determined by monetary factors specifically if there are n sectors in the economy there are n 1 relative prices real variables such as shifts in demand and costs in the various sectors determine these n 1 prices using any good or combination of goods as the numeraire the aggregate price level is determined by the supply and demand for money this idea is summarized by the quantity equation mv 5 py the n 1 relative prices and the price level which equals the average of all nominal prices together determine the n nominal prices in this classical model there is no obvious reason that the behavior of the aggregate price level is related to the distribution of relative prices if m v and y remain constant then p is constant and any shifts in the distribution of relative prices do not influence the price level to explain the observed inflation skewness correlation one must explain how the economy differs from this classical baseline balke and wynne offer one story for the inflationskewness correlation in their model certain shocks to the economy generate both skewness in the relative price distribution and changes in aggregate output for instance when opec raised oil prices relative prices in energy related sectors rose by 50 or more balanced by smaller relativeprice decreases in the rest of the economy this generated

privatization and changes in welfare costs of inflation the case of entel argentina abstract in a country with permanent deficit driven inflation problems the proceeds from privatization may translate into potential reductions of the seigniorage needed to finance a given a level of government expenditure the changes in welfare costs of inflation brought about by divestiture are quantified in a monetary model in an argentine case study these changes were found to be small both in terms of gdp and as a percentage of seigniorage revenue within the model this is mainly explained by the low values encountered for the elasticities of money demand with respect to expected inflation and by the exclusion of considerations about unanticipated inflation

what makes the output inflation trade off change the absence of accelerating deflation in japan it is standard to model the output inflation trade off as a linear relationship with a time invariant slope we assess empirical evidence for two sets of theories that allow for endogenous variation in the slope of the short run phillips curve at an empirical level we examine why large negative output gaps in japan in the late 1990s did not lead to accelerating deflation but instead coincided with stable albeit moderately negative inflation our results suggest that this episode is most convincingly interpreted as reflecting a gradual flattening of the phillips curve we find that this flattening is best explained by models with endogenous price durations these models imply that in any economy where trend inflation is substantially lower or substantially higher today than in past decades time variation in the slope of the phillips curve has become too important to ignore

inflation and relative price variability in yugoslavia abstract granger causality tests show that inflation granger causes relative price variability but the feedback relationship cannot be excluded

on inflation and real price variability this paper studies the consequences of costly price adjustments for the variability of real prices accompanying inflation for constant elasticity demand and cost of production it is shown that a higher demand a lower cost of production or a lower cost of price adjustment leads to less intertemporal variability of real prices if the marginal cost of production does not increase too fast then the average real price is less than the real price that would prevail in the absence of inflation additionally a higher demand a lower cost of production or a lower cost of price adjustment leads to a higher level of real prices

variability of inflation and the dispersion of relative prices evidence from the chinese hyperinflation of 1946 1949 abstract this paper uses data from the chinese hyperinflation of 1946 1949 to focus on the relationship between the variability in the general price level and the dispersion in relative prices the issue is important because it bears on the natural rate hypothesis which supports the postulate that these two monetary variables are independent our results reinforce the bulk of previous evidence which suggests a positive correlation between the variation in inflation rate and the dispersion in relative prices during inflationary episodes

the lucas hypothesis on the phillips curve further international evidence abstract this paper is a further attempt to test the lucas hypothesis on the phillips curve by making cross country comparisons that hypothesis posits that nominal shocks affect real aggregates only if individuals mistake them for what they are not movements in real variables the existence of a trade off between output and inflation is conditional on economic agents misinterpreting the price movements they observe countries with widely fluctuating exogenous shocks will have a more vertical phillips curve as their inhabitants sharpen their instrumental to differentiate between real and nominal shocks hence cross country comparisons provide fertile grounds to test this hypothesis if it holds true we should find a positive correlation between phillips curve slopes and the standard deviations of the exogenous shocks the evidence presented here confirms lucas s findings

relative price changes as aggregate supply shocks this paper proposes a theory of supply shocks or shifts in the short run phillips curve based on relative price changes and frictions in nominal price adjustment when price adjustment is costly firms adjust to large shocks but not to small shocks and so large shocks have disproportionate effects on the price level therefore aggregate inflation depends on the distribution of relative price changes inflation rises when the distribution is skewed to the right and falls when the distribution is skewed to the left we show that this theoretical result explains a large fraction of movements in postwar u s inflation moreover our model suggests measures of supply shocks that perform better than traditional measures such as the relative prices of food and energy

a proposition on short run departures from the law of one price unanticipated inflation relative price dispersion and commodity arbitrage abstract this paper proposes an explanation of short run departures from the law of one price based on the characteristics of the inflationary process and changes in the distribution of relative prices unexpected inflation gives rise to volatility of relative prices the more unexpected and hence uneven the rate of inflation the greater the difficulty in discerning from a given structure of relative prices commodity arbitrage opportunities which may be expected to persist and those transient opportunities which do not warrant a firm s incurring fixed costs of arbitrage an illustration portrays a risk averse firm confronting an international arbitrage opportunity

market structure and price flexibility abstract the relationship between market form and price adjustment patterns is examined by using disaggregated price data for mexico over the 1940 1984 period frequency of price adjustment and characteristics of goods and industries appear to be related as predicted by menu cost and customer market models the pattern of response followed by individual prices to inflationary shocks is related to their frequency of price adjustment the typical pattern of response to small and large shocks may differ contrary to predictions based on models with overlapping contracts in addition the empirical results have implications for the relationship between inflation and relative price variability

intracountry evidence on the lucas variance hypothesis intracountry evidence on the lucas variance hypothesis i introduction seventeen years ago lucas 1973 developed an aggregate supply model that challenged the efficacy of neo keynesian macroeconomic stabilization policy and significantly altered the development of macroeconomic models employing a multimarket stochastic equilibrium model lucas assumed that individual suppliers decide how much to produce based on perceived relative prices their expectations of future prices and demand are formed rationally using all available information about specific and economy wide prices and quantities changes in market specific prices however reflect both changes in the general price level and changes in relative prices individual suppliers cannot distinguish between the two because they have instantaneous information about their own specific prices but only lagged information about the general price level thus a current unanticipated increase in the general price level and nominal aggregate demand will be partly perceived by suppliers as an increase in the relative price and relative demand for their goods and they will temporarily increase output a highly volatile general price level and nominal aggregate demand result in less general relative price confusion and a fading of the short run output inflation tradeoff that is the lucas model suggests an inverse relationship between the output inflation tradeoff and the variability of the rate of inflation and the rate of change of nominal aggregate demand lucas used a sample of eighteen countries to see whether the terms of the output inflation tradeoff vary across countries in the way predicted by the natural rate theory 1973 330 he estimated the following reduced form supply function over the 1952 67 period y sub ct pi delta pi delta chi sub t lambda y sub c t 1 1 where y sub ct is detrended real gnp delta chi sub t is the change of the natural logarithm of nominal gnp delta is the average rate of demand expansion lambda is the speed of adjustment with lambda less than to 1 and pi is the response of real gnp to changes in nominal gnp with 0 is not less than or equal to pi is not less than or equal to 1 since the estimated tradeoff coefficients were found to be greater for a group of sixteen stable countries than for two highly volatile countries lucas argued that the behavior of the estimated pi values across countries is in striking conformity with the natural rate hypothesis 1973 332 empirical studies by albero 1981 attfield and duck 1983 fernadez 1977 hanson 1980 hercowitz 1983 and koskela and viren 1980 have generally provided cross country evidence supporting luca s variance hypothesis froyen and waud 1980 however presented in addition to cross country evidence limited intracountry evidence for 1 the relationship between the output inflation tradeoff and the variances of the rate of change of nominal income and the price level and 2 the relationship between the variance of the inflation rate and the variance of the rate of change of nominal income they examined these relationships on a cross country basis for each of ten industrialized countries for the 1956 76 period the 1957 66 and 1967 76 subperiods were used to make intracountry comparisons in individual countries their cross country and intracountry results support the hypothesis that the output inflation tradeoff and the variance of the inflation rate are inversely related their evidence however does not suggest that the variance of the rate of change of nominal income is negatively correlated with the tradeoff and positively correlated with the variance of the inflation rate 1 it is assumed in luca s paper and all other cross country studies that the slope of the supply curve gamma and the variance of the specific market price from its economy wide average tau

devaluations and income distribution in latin america although the adoption of floating exchange rates by industrial countries may have reduced their foreign trade preoccupations most developing countries ldcs retain some form of fixed rates and have to confront with seemingly increasing frequency the dilemmas raised by large balance of payment deficits in spite of the clamor that arises over the allegedly negative impact on real wages and income distribution of the typical stabilization package of exchange rate devaluation and domestic contraction little rigorous study of the problem has been attempted since diaz alejandro s pathbreaking work of over two decades ago 12 in this article we present a model in which devaluations and domestic contraction2 lower the real wage and worsen the distribution of income and test that hypothesis for nine latin american countries for the theoretical presentation of our argument we construct a pair of aggregate supply curves one modeling labor supply along classical lines the other utilizing what is called the new classical macroeconomics the demand side is composed alternatively of a straightforward function representing changing domestic demand or of formulations of devaluations utilizing either of two markedly different assumptions about what happens to the money supply although these models have different implications about what happens to aggregate output 47 they all agree as to the effects on real wages a brief argument is then presented as to why changes in real wages should determine changes in labor s share of output or the functional distribution of income empirical tests support our hypotheses we also discuss the relation between labor s share and the size distribution of income and the broader question of intersectoral income redistribution due to these demand shifts we end the paper with some concluding remarks on related issues

overconfidence and excess entry an experimental approach psychological studies show that most people are overconfident about their own relative abilities and unreasonably optimistic about their futures e g shelly e taylor and j d brown 1988 neil d weinstein 1980 when assessing their position in a distribution of peers on almost any positive trait like driving ability ola svenson 1981 income prospects or longevity a vast majority of people say they are above the average although of course only half can be if the trait is symmetrically distributed this paper explores whether optimistic biases could plausibly and predictably influence economic behavior in one particular setting entry into competitive games or markets many empirical studies show that most new businesses fail within a few years for example using plant level data from the u s census of manufacturers spanning 1963 1982 timothy dunne et al 1988 estimated that 61 5 percent of all entrants exited within five years and 79 6 percent exited within 10 years most of these exits are failures see also dunne et al 1989a 1989b d shapiro and r s khemani 1987

intercountry differences in the relationship between relative price variability and average prices this paper provides new evidence on the relationship between relative price variability and inflation the model uses a consistently defined data set for nine european countries it benefits from the inclusion and testing of the effects of macroeconomic variables and the incorporation into the measures of inflation and dispersion adjustments for timeliness appropriate formulas and proximity the general findings of an effect on relative price variability by the macroeconomic environment and negative coefficients on unexpected inflation are supported by their occurrence in models estimated by seemingly unrelated regression and a robust systems estimator

inflation and relative price variability short run vs long run abstract this paper uses recent developments in measuring correlation to examine the relationship between inflation and relative price variability rpv the results suggest that the positive correlation holds not only in the short run but also in the long run this finding has important implications for theoretical models that purport to explain this relationship such models must incorporate features that generate positive relationships that hold even in the long run

performance promotion and the peter principle this paper considers why organizations use promotions rather than just monetary bonuses to motivate employees even though this may conflict with efficient assignment of employees to jobs when performance is unverifiable use of promotion reduces the incentive for managers to be affected by influence activities that would blunt the effectiveness of monetary bonuses when employees are risk neutral use of promotion for incentives need not distort assignments when they are risk averse it may sufficient conditions for this are given the distortion may be either to promote more employees than is efficient the peter principle effect or fewer

neutrality of inflation in the agricultural sector abstract the paper considers the effect of inflation on the relative prices of products traded in auction markets prices of us agricultural products are used for the period 1951 1981 since agricultural products are widely traded the real forces of supply and demand specific to agriculture are represented by foreign agricultural prices the exchange rate is entered as a separate variable influencing domestic agricultural prices trade between the usa and the ten countries included in the federal reserve board s trade weighted dollar is considered the empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that inflation did not alter relative agricultural prices when the real forces of supply and demand and the exchange rate are held constant

disinflation credibility and price inertia a danish exposition this paper analyses the disinflationary policy pursued in denmark since october 1982 focusing on the phillips curve trade off and the credibility of this disinflationary policy the overall conclusion confirms no significant indication of the disinflationary policy being credible

relative price dispersion aggregate price movement and the natural rate of unemployment this paper develops a model of relative price stickiness and examines its implications for the relationship between relative prices inflation and the natural rate of unemployment estimation of the model demonstrates that causality in the relationship between relative and aggregate prices runs in both directions however microeconomic disturbances have been the primary source of relative price change variance over the postwar period and these micro disturbances have exerted a strong effect on inflation in the short run it also is shown that micro relative price change dispersion has had a significant influence on the natural rate of unemployment

nominal contracting in a world of uncertainty abstract this paper evaluates corporate sensitivity to relative price risk and inflation risk and suggests how the existence of various nominal contracts particularly debt and forward contracts may modify firm behavior under uncertainty by differentiating between the two types of price risk this paper demonstrates the distinct risk reduction functions served by forward contracts and debt debt primarily protects against inflation risk whereas forward contracts can be used to protect against relative price risk complications arise however because forward contracts which are denominated in nominal terms also have an impact on the firm s degree of inflation risk

strategic promotion and compensation within a hierarchical firm structure this paper details how the composition of a worker s skills and the non observability of a worker s ability affect wage and promotion paths promotionbased compensation schemes derive naturally from the worker s asymmetrically observed ability promotion takes place over time and is inefficient since employers strategically exploit their knowledge of an able worker s ability conversely employers may be unable to efficiently demote and retain bad managers without paying bonuses employers are led to promote educated employees before their equally or more able but uneducated counterparts explanations for fast track promotions plans and other empirical regularities are provided