Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that staggered wage contracts as short as 1 year are capable of generating the type of unemployment persistence which has been observed during postwar business cycles in the United States.
Abstract: Staggered wage contracts as short as 1 year are shown to be capable of generating the type of unemployment persistence which has been observed during postwar business cycles in the United States. A...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a model of staggered prices along the lines of Phelps (1978) and Taylor (1979, 1980), but utilizing an analytically more tractable price-setting technology.
8,580 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a general equilibrium model is developed and fitted to U.S. quarterly data for the post-war period, with the assumption that more than one time period is required for the construction of new productive capital and the non-time-separable utility function that admits greater intertemporal substitution of leisure.
Abstract: The equilibrium growth model is modified and used to explain the cyclical variances of a set of economic time series, the covariances between real output and the other series, and the autocovariance of output. The model is fitted to quarterly data for the post-war U.S. economy. Crucial features of the model are the assumption that more than one time period is required for the construction of new productive capital, and the non-time-separable utility function that admits greater intertemporal substitution of leisure. The fit is surprisingly good in light of the model's simplicity and the small number of free parameters. THAT WINE IS NOT MADE in a day has long been recognized by economists (e.g., Bdhm-Bawerk [6]). But, neither are ships nor factories built in a day. A thesis of this essay is that the assumption of multiple-period construction is crucial for explaining aggregate fluctuations. A general equilibrium model is developed and fitted to U.S. quarterly data for the post-war period. The co-movements of the fluctuations for the fitted model are quantitatively consistent with the corresponding co-movements for U.S. data. In addition, the serial correlations of cyclical output for the model match well with those observed. Our approach integrates growth and business cycle theory. Like standard growth theory, a representative infinitely-lived household is assumed. As fluctuations in employment are central to the business cycle, the stand-in consumer values not only consumption but also leisure. One very important modification to the standard growth model is that multiple periods are required to build new capital goods and only finished capital goods are part of the productive capital stock. Each stage of production requires a period and utilizes resources. Halffinished ships and factories are not part of the productive capital stock. Section 2 contains a short critique of the commonly used investment technologies, and presents evidence that single-period production, even with adjustment costs, is inadequate. The preference-technology-information structure of the model is presented in Section 3. A crucial feature of preferences is the non-time-separable utility function that admits greater intertemporal substitution of leisure. The exogenous stochastic components in the model are shocks to technology and imperfect indicators of productivity. The two technology shocks differ in their persistence.
5,728 citations
Cites background from "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Co..."
...18An alternative way of obtaining persistence is the use of long-term staggered nominal wage contracts as in [35]....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model embodying moderate amounts of nominal rigidities that accounts for the observed inertia in inflation and persistence in output, and the key features of their model are those that prevent a sharp rise in marginal costs after an expansionary shock to monetary policy.
Abstract: We present a model embodying moderate amounts of nominal rigidities that accounts for the observed inertia in inflation and persistence in output. The key features of our model are those that prevent a sharp rise in marginal costs after an expansionary shock to monetary policy. Of these features, the most important are staggered wage contracts that have an average duration of three quarters and variable capital utilization.
4,250 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for the postwar United States economy, before and after Volcker's appointment as Fed Chairman in 1979, and compare some of the implications of the estimated rules for the equilibrium properties of ineation and output, using a simple macroeconomic model.
Abstract: We estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for the postwar United States economy, before and after Volcker’s appointment as Fed Chairman in 1979. Our results point to substantial differences in the estimated rule across periods. In particular, interest rate policy in the Volcker-Greenspan period appears to have been much more sensitive to changes in expected ineation than in the pre-Volcker period. We then compare some of the implications of the estimated rules for the equilibrium properties of ineation and output, using a simple macroeconomic model, and show that the Volcker-Greenspan rule is stabilizing.
3,914 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the results of an empirical study of real output-inflation tradeoffs, based on annual time-series from eighteen countries over the years 1951-67, were examined from the point of view of the hypothesis that average real output levels are invariant under changes in the time pattern of the rate of inflation.
Abstract: This paper reports the results of an empirical study of real output-inflation tradeoffs, based on annual time-series from eighteen countries over the years 1951-67. These data are examined from the point of view of the hypothesis that average real output levels are invariant under changes in the time pattern of the rate of inflation, or that there exists a "natural rate" of real output. That is, we are concerned with the questions (i) does the natural rate theory lead to expressions of the output-inflation relationship which perform satisfactorily in an econometric sense for all, or most, of the countries in the sample, (ii) what testable restrictions does the theory impose on this relationship, and (iii) are these restrictions consistent with recent experience? Since the term "'natural rate theory" refers to varied aggregation of models and verbal developments,' it may be helpful to sketch the key elements of the particular version used in this paper. The first essential presumption is that nominal output is determined on the aggregate demand side of the economy, with the division into real output and the price level largely dependent on the behavior of suppliers of labor and goods. The second is that the partial "rigidities" which dominate shortrun supply behavior result from suppliers' lack of information on some of the prices relevant to their decisions. The third presumption is that inferences on these relevant, unobserved prices are made optimally (or "rationally") in light of the stochastic character of the economy. As I have argued elsewhere (1972), theories developed along these lines will not place testable restrictions on the coefficients of estimated Phillips curves or other single equation expressions of the tradeoff. They will not, for example, imply that money wage changes are linked to price level changes with a unit coefficient, or that {"long-run"' (in the usual distributed lag sense) Phillips curves must be vertical. They will (as we shall see below) link supply parameters to parameters governing the stochastic nature of demand shifts. The fact that the implications of the natural rate theory come in this form suggests an attempt to test it using a sample, such as the one employed in this study, in which a wide variety of aggregate demand behavior is exhibited. In the following section, a simple aggregative model will be constructed using the elements sketched above. Results based on this model are reported in Section II, followed by a discussion and conclusions.
2,373 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a model with overlapping labor contracts with each labor contract being made for two periods was constructed, and the authors argued that monetary policy has the ability to affect the short run behavior of output, though it has no effects on long run output behavior.
Abstract: The paper is concerned with the role of monetary policy and argues that activist monetary policy can affect the behavior of real output, rational expectations notwithstanding. A rational expectations model with overlapping labor contracts is constructed, with each labor contract being made for two periods. These contracts inject an element of short-run wage stickiness into the model. Because the money stock is changed by the monetary authority more frequently than labor contracts are renegotiated, and, given the assumed form of the labor contracts, monetary policy has the ability to affect the short-run behavior of output, though it has no effects on long-run output behavior.
1,909 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, alternative monetary policies are analyzed in an ad hoc macroeconomic model in which the public's expectations about prices are rational, and it turns out that the probility distribution of output is independent of the particular deterministic money supply rule in effect.
Abstract: Alternative monetary policies are analyzed in an ad hoc macroeconomic model in which the public's expectations about prices are rational. The ad hoc model is one in which there is long-run neutrality, since it incorporates the aggregate supply schedule proposed by Lucas. Following Poole, the paper studies whether pegging the interest rate or pegging the money supply period by period minimizes an ad hoc quadratic loss function. It turns out that the probility distribution of output--dispersion as well as mean--is independent of the particular deterministic money supply rule in effect, and that under an interest rate rule the price level is indeterminate.
1,888 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors develop a theoretical example of a business cycle, that is, a model economy in which real output undergoes serially correlated movements about trend which are not explainable by movements in the availability of factors of production.
Abstract: This paper develops a theoretical example of a business cycle, that is, a model economy in which real output undergoes serially correlated movements about trend which are not explainable by movements in the availability of factors of production. The mechanism generating these movements involves unsystematic monetary-fiscal shocks, the effects of which are distributed through time due to information lags and an accelerator effect. Associated with these output movements are procyclical movements in prices, procyclical movements in the share of output devoted to investment, and, in a somewhat limited sense, procyclical movements in nominal rates of interest.
1,010 citations
928 citations