The (ir)relevance of real wage rigidity in the New Keynesian model with search frictions

We develop a New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions in the labor market. We show that the model generates counterfactual labor market dynamics. In particular, it fails to generate the negative correlation between vacancies and unemployment in the data, i.e., the Beveridge curve. 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. The reason is that labor market frictions give rise to long-run employment relationships. The measure of real marginal costs that is relevant for inflation in the Phillips curve contains a present value component that varies independently of the real wage.     

Labor market reform and price stability: An application to the Euro Area

Central bankers frequently suggest that labor market reform may be beneficial for inflation management. This paper investigates this topic by simulating the effects of reductions in firing costs and unemployment benefits on inflation volatility in the Euro Area, using an estimated New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions. Qualitatively, changes in labor market policies alter the volatility of inflation in response to shocks, by affecting the volatility of the three components of real marginal costs (hiring costs, firing costs and wage costs). Quantitatively, we find, however, that neither policy is likely to have an important effect on inflation volatility, due to the small contribution of hiring and firing costs to inflation dynamics.     

Inventory Investment and the Empirical Phillips Curve

In this paper, we study the Calvo pricing models with finished goods inventory investment to demonstrate that the current inflation can be expressed as a function of the marginal cost of sales, not the marginal production cost, and expected future inflation. Under the assumption that the true aggregate marginal costs are not observable in actual data, we make use of equilibrium conditions for aggregate finished goods inventories to measure the time series of marginal costs, thereby leading to the construction of inflation series on the basis of the Phillips curve. Our results indicate the possibility of a successful fit of the empirical New Keynesian Phillips curve without relying on unit labor cost—a conventional measure of marginal production cost in the literature.     

Search Frictions,Real Rigidities,and Inflation Dynamics

The literature on New Keynesian models with search frictions in the labor market commonly assumes that price setters are not actually subject to such frictions. Here, I propose a model where firms are subject both to infrequent price adjustment and search frictions. This interaction gives rise to real price rigidities, which have the effect of slowing down the adjustment of the price level to shocks. This has a number of consequences for equilibrium dynamics. First, inflation becomes less volatile and more persistent. More importantly, the model’s empirical performance improves along its labor market dimensions, such as the size of unemployment fluctuations and the relative volatility of the two margins of labor.     

Technology,Utilization, and Inflation: What Drives the New Keynesian Phillips Curve?

We argue that the New Keynesian Phillips Curve literature has failed to deliver a convincing measure of real marginal costs. We start from a careful modeling of optimal price setting allowing for nonunitary factor substitution, nonneutral technical change, and time‐varying factor utilization rates. This ensures the resulting real marginal cost measures match volatility reductions and level changes witnessed in many U.S. time series. The cost measure comprises conventional countercyclical cost elements plus procyclical (and covarying) utilization rates. Although procyclical elements seem to dominate, the components of real marginal cost components are becoming less cyclical over time. Incorporating this richer driving variable produces more plausible price‐stickiness estimates than otherwise and suggests a more balanced weight of backward‐ and forward‐looking inflation expectations than commonly found. Our results challenge existing views of inflation determinants and have important implications for modeling inflation in New Keynesian models.     

Inflation Dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve in Four Central European Countries

This paper seeks to shed light on the inflation dynamics of four new central European EU members: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. To this end, the New Keynesian Phillips curve augmented for open economies is estimated and additional statistical tests applied, with the following results: (1) the claim of New Keynesians that the real marginal cost is the main inflation-forcing variable is fragile, (2) inflation seems to be driven by external factors, and (3) although inflation holds a forward-looking component, the backward-looking component is substantial. An intuitive explanation for higher inflation persistence may be adaptive, rather than rational price setting of local firms.     

Do expected future marginal costs drive inflation dynamics?

This article discusses a more general interpretation of the two-step minimum distance estimation procedure proposed in Sbordone (2002). The estimator is again applied to a version of the New Keynesian Phillips curve, where inflation dynamics are driven by the expected evolution of marginal costs. The article clarifies econometric issues, addresses concerns about uncertainty and model misspecification raised in recent studies, and assesses the robustness of previous results. While confirming the importance of forward-looking terms in accounting for inflation dynamics, it suggests how the methodology can be applied to extend the analysis of inflation to a multivariate setting.     

The case for inflation stability

We evaluate the case for inflation stabilization in a New Keynesian (NNS) model that includes various frictions, capital accumulation and a variety of shocks. In such a model, price rigidity may provide the monetary authorities with an opportunity to improve upon the inefficient flexible price equilibrium via the suitable cyclical manipulation of real marginal costs. We find that such an opportunity is of limited value and that a strong case for perfect inflation stabilization remains. Policies that tolerate a small amount of inflation variability may outperform perfect inflation targeting when capital adjustment costs are low and the monetary distortion is substantial but only if prices are very flexible.     

Real price and wage rigidities with matching frictions

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.     

Optimal Monetary Policy in a Model with Agency Costs

This paper integrates a fully explicit model of agency costs into an otherwise standard Dynamic New Keynesian model in a particularly transparent way. A principal result is the characterization of agency costs as endogenous markup shocks in an output‐gap version of the Phillips curve. The model's utility‐based welfare criterion is derived explicitly and includes a measure of credit market tightness that we interpret as a risk premium. The paper also fully characterizes optimal monetary policy and provides conditions under which zero inflation is the optimal policy. Finally, optimal policy can be expressed as an inflation targeting criterion that (depending upon parameter values) can be either forward or backward looking.     

German Wage Moderation and European Imbalances: Feeding the Global VAR with Theory

German labor market reforms in the 1990s and 2000s are generally believed to have driven the large increase in the dispersion of current account balances in the Euro Area. We investigate this hypothesis quantitatively. We develop a three‐region open economy New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions from which we derive robust sign restrictions for wage bargaining and matching efficiency shocks which we term wage moderation shocks. We impose these restrictions on a Global VAR consisting of Germany and eight EMU countries to identify a wage moderation shock in Germany. Our results show that, although the German current account was significantly affected by wage moderation shocks, their contribution to European current account imbalances was negligible. We conclude that the German labor market reforms cannot be the lone driver of European imbalances.     

Ramsey monetary policy with labor market frictions

Traditional New Keynesian models prescribe that optimal monetary policy should aim at price stability. In the absence of a labor market frictions, the monetary authority faces no unemployment/inflation trade-off. The design of optimal monetary policy is analyzed here for a framework with sticky prices and matching frictions in the labor market. Optimal policy features deviations from price stability in response to both productivity and government expenditure shocks. When the Hosios [1990. On the efficiency of matching and related models of search and unemployment. Review of Economic Studies 57 (2), 279-298] condition is not met, search externalities make the flexible price allocation unfeasible. Optimal deviations from price stability increase with workers’ bargaining power, as firms incentives to post vacancies fall and unemployment fluctuates above the Pareto efficient one.     

An open-economy new Keynesian Phillips curve for the U.K.

We estimate a pricing equation or “new Keynesian Phillips curve” (NKPC) obtained from a structural dynamic model of price setting based on Rotemberg [1982. Sticky prices in the United States. Journal of Political Economy 90(6), 1187-1211] and extended to capture employment adjustment costs and the openness of the United Kingdom. This model nests the baseline Galí and Gertler [1999. Inflation dynamics: a structural econometric analysis. Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, 127-159) and Sbordone [2002. Prices and unit labor costs: a new test of price stickiness. Journal of Monetary Economics 49, 265-292] relationship between inflation and marginal cost in the limiting case of no employment adjustment costs, no impact of relative prices of imported inputs on real marginal cost and a constant equilibrium markup. Our findings indicate that each of our modifications to the baseline NKPC model is important for U.K. data, so that inflation in the U.K. is explained both by changes in employment and by changes in real import prices, in general, and real oil prices, in particular. External competitive pressures also seem to affect U.K. inflation via their impact on the equilibrium price markup of domestic firms.     

The Role of Real Wage Rigidity and Labor Market Frictions for Inflation Persistence

We analyze the transmission mechanism of wages to inflation within a New Keynesian business cycle model with wage rigidities and labor market frictions. Our main focus is on the channel of real wage rigidities on inflation persistence for which we find the specification of the wage bargaining process to be of crucial importance. Under the standard efficient Nash bargaining, the feedback of wage rigidities on inflation is ambiguous and depends on other labor market variables. However, under the alternative right‐to‐manage bargaining we find that more rigid wages translate directly into more persistent movements of aggregate inflation.     

Quantifying the uncertainty about the fit of a new Keynesian pricing model

Recent studies by Gali and Gertler [1999. Inflation dynamics: a structural econometric analysis, Journal of Monetary Economics 44, 195-222] and Sbordone [2002. Prices and unit labor costs: testing models of pricing, Journal of Monetary Economics 49, 265-292] conclude that a theoretical inflation series implied by a forward-looking New Keynesian pricing equation fits post-1960 U.S. inflation closely. Their theoretical inflation series is conditional on (i) a reduced-form forecasting process for real marginal cost; and (ii) the calibration of the pricing equation. The present paper shows that both of these determinants are surrounded by considerable uncertainty. When quantifying the impact of this uncertainty on theoretical inflation, we can no longer say whether the forward-looking pricing equation explains observed inflation dynamics very well or very poorly.     

Monetary Shocks in a Model with Skill Loss

Unemployment shows persistent and long‐lasting responses to nominal and real shocks. Standard real business cycle models with search frictions but a homogeneous labor force are able to generate some volatility and persistence, but not enough to match the empirical evidence. Moreover, empirical studies emphasize the importance of the heterogeneity of the unemployment pool to fully understand unemployment dynamics. In particular, in most European countries the incidence of long‐term unemployment is large and well known. One of the possible causes/consequences of long‐term unemployment is the skill deterioration of the unemployment pool. In this paper, we introduce the skill loss mechanism, and therefore a heterogeneous labor force, in a New Keynesian framework with search frictions. Calibrating the model for the Spanish economy, we show that while the skill loss mechanism helps to explain the magnitude of the response of unemployment to monetary shocks, it does not improve the performance of the homogeneous worker model in terms of the persistence of the response, especially for short‐ and long‐term unemployment.     

通胀—增长权衡和中国菲利普斯曲线的平坦化

近年来发达经济体出现了菲利普斯曲线平坦化现象,但有关中国的研究尚缺乏共识。本文基于实证和理论分析,系统研究了中国菲利普斯曲线的平坦化问题。首先,结合货币政策冲击和月度SVAR框架,发现通胀的响应程度在2010年后大幅下降。由于证据显示总需求曲线并未平坦化,因此通胀响应弱化可解读为菲利普斯曲线的平坦化。数据显示,菲利普斯曲线平坦化与生产率增长放缓同时发生,因此,本文在标准DSGE模型中引入纵向内生增长渠道,该渠道基于研发投入和知识资本积累,从而使生产率内生于经济周期。研究发现：(1)内生增长渠道放大了需求冲击对产出的影响,但缩小了需求冲击对通胀的影响;(2)内生增长渠道改变通胀和增长之间的替代关系,但不改变边际成本向通胀的传导。分段估计显示,2010年后,通胀和增长的关系弱化是边际成本传导变弱和内生增长渠道变强共同作用的结果。本文认为,由于菲利普斯曲线的平坦化,中央银行应继续坚持稳增长和就业优先战略,关注但不必过于担心由此引发的通胀压力。     

The time-varying cost channel of monetary transmission

This paper studies the time-varying role of the cost channel of monetary transmission, i.e. the supply-side effect of monetary policy based on firms' costs of holding working capital. For that purpose, we provide rolling-window estimates of an augmented New Keynesian Phillips curve and show that the cost channel exhibits important time-varying dynamics. We find, as a general pattern, that the cost channel was most important in the pre-Volcker period and less important in the Volcker–Greenspan era. Recently, however, the cost channel regained importance. Since the cost channel is based on the transmission of policy impulses through bank lending, it is likely that the time-varying cost channel reflects the cyclical nature of financial frictions.     

Robustness of the estimates of the hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve

Galí and Gertler [1999. Inflation dynamics: a structural econometric approach. Journal of Monetary Eonomics 44(2), 195-222] developed a hybrid variant of the New Keynesian Phillips curve that relates inflation to real marginal cost, expected future inflation and lagged inflation. GMM estimates of the model suggest that forward-looking behavior is dominant: the coefficient on expected future inflation substantially exceeds the coefficient on lagged inflation. While the latter differs significantly from zero, it is quantitatively modest. Several authors have suggested that our results are the product of specification bias or suspect estimation methods. Here we show that these claims are incorrect, and that our results are robust to a variety of estimation procedures, including GMM estimation of the closed form, and nonlinear instrumental variables. Also, as we discuss, many others have obtained very similar results to ours using a systems approach, including FIML techniques. Hence, the conclusions of GG and others regarding the importance of forward-looking behavior remain robust.