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Journal Article
Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics 2019 Conference Summary
To provide insights into the processes that drive inflationary dynamics, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland holdsan annual conference on the topic of inflation: “Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics.” This Commentary summarizes thepapers presented at the 2019 conference.
Working Paper
The Inflation Accelerator
We develop a tractable sticky price model in which the fraction of price changesevolves endogenously over time and, consistent with the evidence, increases with inflation. Because we assume that firms sell multiple products and choose how many, but not which, prices to adjust in any given period, our model admits exact aggregation and reduces to a one-equation extension of the Calvo model. This additional equation determines the fraction of price changes. The model features a powerful inflation accelerator – a feedback loop between inflation and the fraction of price changes – which ...
Working Paper
A Theory of Non-Coasean Labor Markets
We develop a theory of labor markets in a monetary economy with four realistic features: search frictions, worker productivity shocks, wage rigidity, and two-sided lack of commitment. Due to the non-Coasean nature of labor contracts, inefficient job separations occur in the form of endogenous quits and layoffs that are unilaterally initiated whenever a worker’s wage-to-productivity ratio moves outside an inaction region. We derive sufficient statistics for the aggregate labor market response to a monetary shock based on the distribution of workers’ wage-to-productivity ratios. These ...
Working Paper
The Dynamics of Large Inflation Surges
We empirically characterize episodes of large inflation surges that have been observed worldwide in the last three decades. We document four facts. (1) Inflation surges tend to be persistent, with the duration of disinflation exceeding that of the initial inflation increase. (2) Surges are initially unexpected but followed by a gradual catch-up of average short-term expectations with realized inflation. (3) Long-term inflation expectations tend to exhibit increases that persist throughout disinflation. (4) Policy responses are characterized by hikes in nominal interest rates but no tightening ...
Working Paper
The Inflation Accelerator
We develop a tractable sticky price model in which the fraction of price changes evolves endogenously over time and, consistent with the evidence, increases with inflation. Because we assume that firms sell multiple products and choose how many, but not which, prices to adjust in any given period, our model admits exact aggregation and reduces to a one-equation extension of the Calvo model. This additional equation determines the fraction of price changes. The model features a powerful inflation accelerator—a feedback loop between inflation and the fraction of price changes—that ...
Working Paper
The Macroeconomics of Irreversibility
We study aggregate capital dynamics in an investment model with idiosyncratic productivity shocks, fixed capital adjustment costs, and irreversibility driven by a wedge between capital purchase and resale prices. We derive sufficient statistics capturing the role of investment frictions on aggregate capital fluctuations, measure these statistics with investment microdata, and exploit them to discipline the capital price wedge. Irreversibility doubles the persistence of capital fluctuations and is crucial for reconciling micro-level investment behavior with macroeconomic propagation.
Working Paper
Nonlinear Inflation Dynamics in Menu Cost Economies
Existing menu cost models, when parameterized to match the micro-price data, cannot reproduce the extent to which the fraction of price changes increases with inflation. In addition, in the presence of strategic complementarities, they predict implausibly large menu costs and misallocation. We resolve these shortcomings using a multi-product menu cost model that features two key ingredients. First, the products sold by a firm are imperfect substitutes. Second, strategic complementarities are at the firm, not product level. In contrast to existing models, the fraction of price changes ...