wage rigidities and jobless recoveries abstract real wage rigidities cause jobless recoveries suppose that a one time shock reduces the capital stock below trend if wages are flexible they decline and employment increases at the moment of the shock before both revert back to normal levels as the economy grows back to trend if wages are completely rigid and the labor market is otherwise frictionless the shock causes a proportional and permanent decline in employment capital output consumption and investment relative to trend in a search model with rigid wages the shock causes a persistent but not permanent decline in these economic outcomes a jobless recovery

the ir relevance of real wage rigidity in the new keynesian model with search frictions we explore the role of real wage dynamics in a new keynesian business cycle model with search and matching frictions in the labor market both job creation and destruction are endogenous we show that the model generates counterfactual inflation and labor market dynamics in particular it fails to generate a beveridge curve vacancies and unemployment are positively correlated introducing real wage rigidity leads to a negative correlation and increases the magnitude of labor market flows to more realistic values however inflation dynamics are only weakly affected by real wage rigidity this is because of the presence of labor market frictions which generate long run employment relationships the measure of real marginal cost that is relevant for inflation dynamics via the phillips curve contains a dynamic component that does not necessarily move with real wages

real rigidities and the non neutrality of money rigidities in real prices are not sufficient to create rigidities in nominal prices and real effects of nominal shocks and by themselves small frictions in nominal adjustment such as costs of changing prices create only small non neutralities but this paper shows that substantial nominal rigidity can arise from a combination of real rigidities and small nominal frictions the paper shows the connection between real and nominal rigidity given the presence of nominal frictions both in general and for two specific sources of real rigidity one arising from goods market imperfections and the other from labour market imperfections

money interest rates and exchange rates with endogenously segmented markets we analyze the effects of money injections on interest rates and exchange rates when agents must pay a baumol tobin style fixed cost to exchange bonds and money asset markets are endogenously segmented because this fixed cost leads agents to trade bonds and money infrequently when the government injects money through an open market operation only those agents that are currently trading absorb these injections through their impact on these agents consumption these money injections affect real interest rates and real exchange rates the model generates the observed negative relation between expected inflation and real interest rates as well as persistent liquidity effects in interest rates and volatile and persistent exchange rates

monetary policy and distribution a segmented markets model of monetary policy is constructed in which a novel feature is goods market segmentation and its relationship to conventional asset market segmentation the implications of the model for the response of prices interest rates consumption labor supply and output to monetary policy are determined as well optimal monetary policy is studied as are the costs of inflation the model features persistent nonneutralities of money relative price effects of increases in the money supply persistent liquidity effects and a negative fisher effect from a money supply increase a friedman rule is in general suboptimal

the cyclical behavior of the price cost markup countercyclical markups constitute the key transmission mechanism for monetary and other demand shocks in new keynesian models this paper tests the foundation of those models by studying the cyclical properties of the markup of price over marginal cost the first part of the paper studies markups in the aggregate economy and the manufacturing sector we use bils s 1987 insights for converting average cost to marginal cost but do so with richer data we find that all measures of markups are either procyclical or acyclical moreover we show that monetary shocks lead markups to fall with output the second part of the paper merges input output information on shipments to the government with detailed industry data to study the effect of demand changes on industry level markups industry level markups are found to be acyclical in response to demand changes

large firm dynamics and the business cycle do large firm dynamics drive the business cycle we answer this question by developing a quantitative theory of aggregate fluctuations caused by firm level disturbances alone we show that a standard heterogeneous firm dynamics setup already contains in it a theory of the business cycle without appealing to aggregate shocks we offer an analytical characterization of the law of motion of the aggregate state in this class of models the firm size distribution and show that aggregate output and productivity dynamics display i persistence ii volatility and iii time varying second moments we explore the key role of moments of the firm size distribution and in particular the role of large firm dynamics in shaping aggregate fluctuations theoretically quantitatively and in the data

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

the effects of monetary policy shocks on inequality abstract this paper provides new evidence of the effect of conventional monetary policy shocks on income inequality we construct a measure of unanticipated changes in policy rates changes in short term interest rates that are orthogonal to unexpected changes in growth and inflation news for a panel of 32 advanced and emerging market countries over the period 1990 2013 our main finding is that contractionary monetary policy shocks increase income inequality on average the effect is asymmetric tightening of policy raises inequality more than easing lowers it and depends on the state of the business cycle we find some evidence that the effect increases with the share of labor income and is mitigated by redistribution policies finally while an unexpected increase in policy rates increases inequality changes in policy rates driven by an increase in growth and inflation are associated with lower inequality

real price and wage rigidities with matching frictions abstract frictional unemployment means that workers for some time are a firm specific factor of production this paper models the resulting interaction of wage bargaining and price setting at the firm level in a new keynesian model with labor market matching frictions real rigidities arise and the labor share ceases to be a good proxy for marginal costs the model replicates the impulse responses of an svar for u s data better than alternatives in which the real rigidities arising at the firm level are absent in addition it implies reasonably low degrees of nominal rigidity whereas the alternatives do not the interaction of wage and price setting at the firm level is important for the macroeconomic dynamics

capital market imperfections and countercyclical markups theory and evidence during recessions output prices seem to rise relative to wages and raw material prices one explanation is that imperfectly competitive firms compete less aggressively during recessions that is markups of price over marginal cost are countercyclical the authors present a model of countercyclical markups based on capital market imperfections during recessions liquidity constrained firms boost short run profits by raising prices to cut their investments in market share the authors provide evidence from the supermarket industry in support of this theory during regional and macroeconomic recessions more financially constrained supermarket chains raise their prices relative to less financially constrained chains copyright 1996 by american economic association

durable consumption and asset management with transaction and observation costs this paper provides a contribution to the recent growing literature on rational inattention we start by testing the implications of recent rational inattention models of asset management liquidity holdings and savings using two novel datasets some predictions of these models are at odds with the data which motivates us to introduce a new model that shifts the focus from non durable to durable consumption and features both information and adjustment costs the focus on non durable consumption which departs from the previous literature is key to improve the fit of the model the investor s behavior in our setup combines elements of what the literature refers to as state dependent and time dependent adjustments the model allows us to quantify the information and transactions costs that are consistent with observed patterns of information review and asset trades a calibration of the model shows that very small information costs are sufficient to reproduce the relatively high frequency of observation that is found in the data we test a novel prediction of the model on the relationship between assets trades and durable goods trades and find it aligned with the data

optimal monetary policy with heterogeneous money holdings abstract we study the optimal anticipated policy in a pure currency economy with flexible prices and a non degenerate distribution of money holdings the economy features a business cycle and lump sum monetary injections have distributional effects that depend on the state of the cycle we parsimoniously characterize the dynamics of the economy and study the optimal regulation of the money supply as a function of the state under commitment the optimal policy prescribes monetary expansions in recessions when insurance is most needed by the cash poor unproductive agents conversely the optimal policy prescribes monetary contractions during booms so that the inflationary effect of the occasional expansions is undone

sticky price and limited participation models of money a comparison abstract we provide new evidence that models of the monetary transmission mechanism should be consistent with at least the following facts after a contractionary monetary policy shock the aggregate price level responds very little aggregate output falls interest rates initially rise real wages decline by a modest amount and profits fall we compare the ability of sticky price and limited participation models with frictionless labor markets to account for these facts the key failing of the sticky price model lies in its counterfactual implications for profits the limited participation model can account for all the above facts but only if one is willing to assume a high labor supply elasticity 2 percent and a high markup 40 percent the shortcomings of both models reflect the absence of labor market frictions such as wage contracts or factor hoarding which dampen movements in the marginal cost of production after a monetary policy shock 1997 elsevier science b v

the four worlds of contemporary industry the authors propose to endogenize industrial diversity by beginning with the product defined in terms of its qualities for the user specialized standardized dedicated generic for each type of product there is a coherent possible combination of product dualities production technologies and markets these coherent combinations can only come about when coherent mutual expectations conventions are formed between actors in the production system in terms of resource qualities quantities and their economic equivalents the theoretical problem of diversity is redefined as one of collective action the coherence of conventions of groups of actors helps explain what they do in market economies and how they do it copyright 1992 by oxford university press

estimation and control of an optimization based model with sticky prices and wages abstract this paper provides estimates of an optimization based equilibrium model with sticky prices and wages the estimated model is used to analyse the welfare properties of various interest rate rules for conducting monetary policy an important feature of this model is that it involves a tradeoff between the variances of price and wage inflation and the output gap this tradeoff implies that it is desirable for the monetary authority to respond to wage inflation in addition to price inflation output and past interest rates when setting the current interest rate the issue whether wages and prices can be indexed to steady state inflation has important implications both for the characterization of optimal interest rate rules and interest rate volatility in particular optimal policy in the presence of indexation induces implausibly high steady state inflation

unemployment and business cycles we develop and estimate a general equilibrium search and matching model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates including labor market variables in sharp contrast to leading new keynesian models we do not impose wage inertia instead we derive wage inertia from our specification of how firms and workers negotiate wages our model outperforms a variant of the standard new keynesian calvo sticky wage model according to our estimated model there is a critical interaction between the degree of price stickiness monetary policy and the duration of an increase in unemployment benefits

heterogeneous consumers segmented asset markets and the real effects of monetary policy this paper proposes a novel mechanism by which changes in the distribution of money holdings have real effects specifically i develop a flexible price model of segmented asset markets that generates real aggregate effects of monetary policy through the dependence of optimal markups on the heterogeneity of money holdings because varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially newly injected money disseminates slowly throughout the economy via second round effects the model predicts a short term inflation output trade off a liquidity effect countercyclical markups and procyclical wages after monetary shocks among other correlations of financial variables it also reproduces the empirical negative relationship between changes in the money supply and markups

innocent bystanders monetary policy and inequality abstract we study the effects of monetary policy shocks on and their historical contribution to consumption and income inequality in the united states since 1980 as measured by the consumer expenditure survey contractionary monetary policy systematically increases inequality in labor earnings total income consumption and total expenditures furthermore monetary policy shocks account for a non trivial component of the historical cyclical variation in income and consumption inequality using detailed micro level data on income and consumption we document some of the different channels via which monetary policy shocks affect inequality as well as how these channels depend on the nature of the change in monetary policy

changes in the effects of monetary policy on disaggregate price dynamics abstract based on a time varying factor augmented vector autoregression we demonstrate that the propagation mechanism of monetary policy disturbances differs across disaggregate components of personal consumption expenditures while many disaggregate prices rise temporarily in response to a monetary tightening in the early part of the sample there is no evidence of a price puzzle at the aggregate level the share of disaggregate prices that exhibit the price puzzle diminishes from the early 1980s onwards there also is evidence of a substantial decline in the dispersion of disaggregate price responses over time this gradual decrease in cross sectional heterogeneity of disaggregate price responses is associated with a dampening effect on aggregate real economic activity and a stronger effect on the aggregate price level we illustrate by means of a multi sector sticky price model augmented by a cost channel how key structural parameters would have had to change to match this evolution of sectoral price dynamics

inflation and welfare in the steady state this is a paper on expected inflation and welfare in steady state equilibrium the demand for money is an inventory demand with an endogenous payment period the clower constraint is not imposed higher inflation reduces welfare by reducing consumption as people devote more of their real income to maintaining lower average money holdings high inflation does not necessarily promote an increase in the capital stock the mundell tobin effect is absent the policy conclusion is standard deflate at the rate of time preference because capital is held socially optimal consumption falls short of its golden rule level if inside money is allowed it drives out fiat money and welfare is again at a maximum

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