The Relationship Between Nominal Wage and Price Flexibility: New Evidence

The frequencies at which prices and wages are adjusted, interpreted as price and wage flexibility, are key elements in workhorse models used for policy analysis. Yet, there is little evidence regarding the relationship between these two sources of nominal rigidities. Using two large and highly disaggregated price and wage microdata sets, this paper provides evidence that the industries changing more frequently wages reset prices more often. Once the frequency of wage adjustments is accounted for, the share of labor costs becomes less relevant in explaining the frequency of price changes, calling for a reinterpretation on previous findings that the labor share is a robust determinant of the frequency of price adjustments. The results in this study have implications for New Keynesian models' microfoundations, as their predictions have proven to be sensitive to the nominal rigidities assumptions.

Real and Nominal Equilibrium Yield Curves

This paper quantitatively explores the role of external habits, nominal rigidities, and monetary policy for real and nominal bond yields in an asset-pricing endogenous growth model. The calibration captures the reported average positive slopes of U.S. real and nominal yield curves with sizable positive real and nominal bond risk premia. Habits are critical to generate positive real premia by altering the comovement of real rates and productivity shocks. Nominal rigidities generate monetary policy effects on real bonds. Stronger policy rule inflation responses or weaker output responses increase real term premia and reduce inflation risk premia. Relative to standard models, the paper provides an alternative interpretation of real and nominal bond risks. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance.

Leijonhufvud on New Keynesian Economics and the economics of Keynes

The theme that Axel Leijonhufvud has extracted from the economics of Keynes is the potential for failures in the intertemporal coordination of activities in complex market systems. In his path-breaking book of 1968, he attacked standard Keynesian Economics for its view on frictions, which reduces the causes of macroeconomic pathologies to nominal rigidities. With the rise of DSGE-based New Keynesian Economics, Leijonhufvud has pointed out that ‘standard macroeconomics’ is still stuck in the frictions view. Referring to recent financial crises, he considers DSGE modelling to be hopelessly inadequate for dealing with such macroeconomic instability. Yet, the financial frictions literature in New Keynesian Economics claims to have found ways to incorporate financial crises into DSGE frameworks. The article describes continuity and change in Leijonhufvud’s critique of Old and New Keynesians, and assesses contrary claims to progress made in the DSGE world.

Failure to Launch: Housing, Debt Overhang, and the Inflation Option

Can inflating away nominal mortgage liabilities effectively combat recessions? I address this question using a model of illiquid housing, endogenous credit supply, and equilibrium default. I show that, in an ordinary recession, temporarily raising the inflation target has only modest or even counterproductive effects. However, during episodes like the Great Recession, inflation effectively boosts house prices, consumption, and dramatically cuts foreclosures, but only when fixed-rate mortgages are the dominant instrument. The quantitative implications of inflation also vary if other nominal rigidities or demand externalities are present. In the cross section, inflation delivers especially large gains to highly leveraged homeowners. (JEL D14, E31, E32, E52, G21, R31)