Variation in the Effects of Aggregate Demand Shocks: Evidence and Implications across Industrial Countries

Over a sample of nineteen industrial countries, more variable aggregate demand and/or higher mean inflation attenuates (augments) the effect of aggregate demand shocks on real output growth (wage and price inflation) while having no effect on the response of the real wage to such shocks. In all countries examined, aggregate demand shocks are positively (negatively) correlated with nominal variables (real output). Among explanations of the business cycle based on shocks to aggregate demand, this evidence favors the new Keynesian sticky wage explanation over the sticky price and the new classical imperfect information explanations.     

Nominal Wage Contracts, Adjustment Costs and Real Persistence of Monetary Shocks

This paper describes a model in which monetary shocks have persistent real effects. Starting from the limited participation model of Christiano (1991) with capital adjustment costs as suggested by Dow (1995) it is confirmed that costs of equipment installation and restrictions on consumer portfolio choices alone cannot account for the observed effects of monetary policy. However, after introducing nominal wage contracts as a third friction, the model generates real effects of monetary shocks. It is shown that these real effects are highly persistent for a realistic size of adjustment costs and strongly autocorrelated money growth shocks which are typical for Europe.     

Inflation in South Africa: An Assessment of Alternative Inflation Models

We consider the relative empirical performance of a range of inflation models for South Africa. Model coverage is of Phillips curve, New Keynesian Phillips curve, monetarist and structural models of inflation. Our core findings are that the single most robust covariate of inflation is unit labour cost. We further decompose unit labour cost into changes in the nominal wage and real labour productivity. The principal association is a strong positive relationship between inflation and nominal wages, while improvements in real labour productivity report only a relatively weak negative association with inflation. Supply‐side shocks also consistently report an association with inflation. As to demand‐side shocks, the output gap does not return a robust statistical association with inflation. Instead, it is growth in the money supply and government expenditure which return robust and theoretically consistent associations with inflationary pressure.     

Targeting Rules for an Open Economy

This study extends the formal analysis of inflation targeting monetary policy using the standard New Keynesian framework to a small open economy by adding inflation and output persistence as well as a direct exchange rate channel to domestic inflation. We find that output variability is lower under CPI inflation targeting than under domestic inflation targeting. However, CPI inflation results in higher variability of the real exchange rate than domestic inflation targeting. Output and the nominal interest rate are less volatile under flexible inflation targeting than under almost-strict inflation targeting. We also find that almost-strict domestic inflation targeting cannot completely insulate domestic inflation from foreign shocks due to a direct exchange rate channel. The model is calibrated to Canadian data.     

Permanent and Temporary Components of Stock Prices: Evidence from Assessing Macroeconomic Shocks

This paper outlines a simple macro model with overlapping wage contracts to investigate how the temporary and permanent components of stock price movements may be related to aggregate macro-economic supply and demand disturbances. In the content of the model, we show that aggregate demand shocks have only temporary effects on real stock prices, while supply shocks may affect the level of real stock prices permanently. Moreover, the temporary component in U.S. stock prices, identified by placing appropriate structural restrictions on a vector autoregressive system estimated for the postwar period, is statistically significant. This evidence supports the mean-reversion hypothesis that stock prices are not pure random walks. The finding is robust to the choice of variables used in the vector autoregressive system and periodicity.     

Asymmetric wage indexation

Models of wage indexation uniformly have been based on the simplifying assumption that nominal wages adjust upward or downwrd symmetrically with unexpected price increases or decreases. Indexation typically is asymmetric in actual contracts, however. Wages are indexed to price increases but not to price reductions. This paper analyzes a macroeconomic model with asymmetric indexation. On the one hand, this paper finds that when stable equilibria supporting use of such asymmetrically indexed contracts exist, the result is an unambiguous downward bias in the base contract wage, because workers must pay a premium for insurance against real wage reductions that unexpected inflation otherwise would induce. On the other hand, the paper concludes that the likelihood of existence of stable equilibria supporting positive wage indexation generally declines as aggregate demand variability rises relative to the variability of aggregate supply. This may help explain why relatively low levels of wage indexation actually are observed in nations with relatively contained aggregate demand volatility.     

Oil shocks and endogenous markups: results from an estimated euro area DSGE model

This paper estimates a linearised DSGE model for the euro area. The model is New Keynesian and allows for a role for oil usage and endogenous price markups. The importance of shocks to monetary policy and oil prices is estimated to have declined in the post-1990 period, in line with the higher predictability of policy and the fall in the persistence and—to a lesser extent—variability of oil disturbances. Counterfactual exercises show that oil efficiency gains would alleviate the inflationary and contractionary consequences of oil shocks, while higher wage flexibility would help ease the impact on real output at the expense of larger inflationary pressures. While we report evidence of “countercyclical” price markups, the rise in markups induced by an oil disturbance is not found to considerably amplify the inflationary and contractionary effects of the shock. The paper discusses the policy implications of our empirical results for the euro area economy.     

Inflationary shocks and real output growth in nine Muslim-majority countries: Implications for Islamic banking and finance

Low and stable inflation is important for maintaining the viability of Islamic banking and finance within a dual banking system. Inflationary shocks when transmitted to real output growth cause a shift of investment to fixed return products as a hedge against the uncertainty of returns on equity investment under Islamic profit-loss sharing contracts. This study examines the transmission of inflationary shocks to the real economy for nine Muslim-majority countries (Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) that have introduced Islamic banking, all except Iran within dual-banking systems. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) framework is deployed to understand macroeconomic relationships using annual data from the late 1970s to 2014. The key finding is that inflationary shocks affect real interest and exchange rates which in turn impact real output growth. The paper argues that the absorption of inflationary shocks in real interest and exchange rates is the outcome of rigidities in nominal interest and exchange rates within repressed financial systems. Policy regimes that allow for greater adjustment in nominal interest and exchange rates under a deregulated financial system would offer better shock absorption capacity which would lead to less volatility in inflation, real interest and exchange rates, and real output growth. The resulting more stable macroeconomic environment would be more conducive to the development of an Islamic financial sector that would promote economic growth.     

Demand Shocks and Trade Balance Dynamics

This paper studies the trade balance dynamics in the G-7 countries plus Spain. We estimate a SVAR model to identify three different shocks: real supply shocks, real demand disturbances and nominal shocks. A microfounded stochastic open-economy model is built to derive the long-term identification restrictions. Estimates show that real demand shocks explain most of the variability of trade imbalances, whereas, contrary to previous findings, nominal shocks play a very limited role. These results are consistent with the predictions of a widely set of open-economy models and illustrate that demand policies are the main responsible of trade imbalances.     

Wage misalignment in CFA countries: were labour market policies to blame?

Wage rigidity, stemming from highly distortive labour marketpolicies, is a natural candidate to explain the overvaluationof the CFA franc after the adverse external shocks of the 1980s.This paper uses a variety of data sources to assess wage rigidityin CFA countries until the 1994 devaluation, and to analysewhether it was due to labour market policies. The paper showsthat wages were high in CFA countries, compared with both wagesin similar countries and the labour earnings of similar individualswithin the same countries. It also shows that wages were rigidin real terms, in the sense of following closely the fluctuationsof government wages and consumer prices, but it finds no evidenceof nominal wage rigidity, though. From an international perspective,minimum wages were not high enough to account for the observedwage misalignment. Moreover, their adjustment over time washighly responsive to real shocks. Private sector unions, inturn, seemed more instrumental in achieving wage moderationthan wage drift. Their members usually had lower wages thansimilar, non-unionised workers, which probably reflects the'subordinate' nature of the labour movement. The most likelycandidates to explain wage misalignment and real rigidity inCFA countries in the 1980s and early 1990s are therefore governmentpay policies and (possibly) limited competition in product markets.     

Will the Sarb always Succeed in Fighting Inflation with Contractionary Policy?

The conventional view is that a monetary policy shock has both supply‐side and demand‐side effects, at least in the short run. Barth and Ramey show that the supply‐side effect of a monetary policy shock may be greater than the demand‐side effect. We argue that it is crucial for monetary authorities to understand whether an increase in expected future inflation is due to supply shocks or demand shocks before applying contractionary policy to forestall inflation. We estimate a standard New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with the cost channel of monetary policy for the South African economy to show that whether the South African Reserve Bank should apply contractionary policy to fight inflation depends critically on the nature of the disturbance. If an increase in expected future inflation is mainly due to supply shocks, the South African Reserve Bank should not apply contractionary policy to fight inflation, as this would lead to a persistent increase in inflation and a greater loss in output. Our estimation results also show that with a moderate level of cost‐channel effect and nominal rigidities, a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with the cost channel of monetary policy is able to mimic the price puzzle produced by an estimated vector autoregressive model.     

Nominal rigidity and some new evidence on the New Keynesian theory of the output-inflation tradeoff

This paper develops a series of tests to check whether the New Keynesian nominal rigidity hypothesis on the output-inflation tradeoff withstands new evidence. In so doing, I summarize and evaluate four different estimation methods that have been applied in the literature to address this hypothesis. Both cross-country and over-time variations in the output-inflation tradeoff are checked with the tests that differentiate the effects on the tradeoff that are attributable to nominal rigidity (the New Keynesian argument) from those ascribable to variance in nominal growth (the alternative new classical explanation). I find that in line with the New Keynesian hypothesis, nominal rigidity is an important determinant of the tradeoff. Given less rigid prices in high-inflation environments, changes in nominal demand are transmitted to quicker and larger movements in prices and lead to smaller fluctuations in the real economy. The tradeoff between output and inflation is hence smaller.     

Monetary and fiscal policy in interdependent two-sector economies

Summary This paper considers a two-country-two-sector world with tradables and non-tradables, floating exchange rates, perfect capital mobility and sluggish labour markets. The model assumes either nominal or real wage rigidity and either perfect or imperfect substitution between home and foreign-produced tradables. The effects and spillover effects of fiscal and monetary shocks are compared with the standard results from well-known macroeconomic two-country counterparts of the model. The purpose is to establish the degree of robustness of the latter with respect to disaggregation and to gain insight into the sectoral transmissions of the shocks.The authors wish to thank Lans Bovenberg, Theo van de Klundert, Christian Mulder, Frederick van der Ploeg, Martin van Tuijl, Leo van Veldhuizen and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

The impact of technology shocks on the Japanese business cycle—An empirical analysis based on Japanese industry data

In order to investigate the impacts of technology shocks on the recent Japanese business cycles, we construct an aggregate technological measure from industry-based data. Our approach is to estimate production function by industry, by controlling for the returns to scale factor and unobserved factor utilization. We find that positive technology shocks result in a contraction of labor input on impact. This result implies that the standard real business cycle (RBC) model is not supported and the new Keynesian model or the labor reallocation model is a candidate to explain the Japanese business cycles. From further empirical studies, we find that the labor reallocation model is plausible for explaining the Japanese business cycles.     

A Quantitative Assessment of the Role of Incomplete Asset Markets on the Dynamics of the Real Exchange Rate

I develop a two-country New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and incomplete international asset markets that provides novel insights on the effect that imperfect international risk-sharing has on international business cycles and RER dynamics. I find that business cycles appear similar whether international asset markets are complete or not when driven by a combination of non-persistent monetary shocks and persistent productivity (TFP) shocks. In turn, international asset market incompleteness has sizeable effects if (persistent) investment-specific technology (IST) shocks are a main driver of business cycles. I also show that the model with incomplete international asset markets can approximate the RER volatility and persistence observed in the data, for instance, if IST shocks are near-unit-root. Hence, I conclude that the nature of shocks, the extent of financial integration across countries and the existing limitations on asset trading are central to understand the dynamics of the real exchange rate and the endogenous international transmission over the business cycles.     

The role of oil price shocks on China's real exchange rate

This paper investigates to what extent the oil price shock and three other types of underlying macroeconomic shocks impact the trend movements of China's real exchange rate. By constructing a four-dimensional structural VAR model, the results suggest that real oil price shocks would lead to a minor appreciation of the long-term real exchange rate due to China's lesser dependence on imported oil than its trading partners included in the RMB basket peg regime and rigorous government energy regulations. The real shocks, as opposed to nominal shocks, are found to be dominant in the variations of the real exchange rate.     

Nominal versus real wage rigidity in a monopoly union: A synthesis

Based upon a monopoly union model, this paper addresses how the degree of money illusion of the union member and the indexation rule of unemployment benefits are interdependent in governing the possibility of either nominal or real wage rigidity. Two main findings emerge from the analysis. First, nominal wage rigidity is present unless union members are characterized by complete money illusion and the government does not adjust its nominal unemployment payments. Second, real wage rigidity holds if union members are free of money illusion and nominal unemployment benefits are fully indexed to either union-set wages or the product price.     

Effects of Monetary Policy during Financial Market Crises and Regime Changes: An Empirical Evaluation Using a Nonlinear Vector Autoregression Model

Using monthly data for Korea, this study examines nonlinear effects of monetary policy in association with financial market distress. The study uses a nonlinear vector autoregression model and finds that monetary policy becomes ineffective for addressing huge demand contractions in times of financial market turmoil or severe economic downturn, implying a structural change from a non‐Keynesian to a Keynesian regime, such as a liquidity trap. Monetary contractions have stronger output effects than monetary expansions, particularly in times of financial distress. We found no evidence in favor of asymmetric effects of monetary shocks of different sizes. Finally, we also found financial shocks to have stronger effects on the real economy in times of financial distress than in normal times. The results have important policy implications for periods of financial turmoil or economic crisis.     

Books and publications received

ABSTRACT

Economic theory predicts that regional wages will converge as transport and communication technologies bring labour markets together. An exploration of this transition from labour market segmentation to unification requires long-term evidence of nominal wages and cost of living by region. This paper presents new evidence of wages for male manufacturing workers and cost-of-living indices across 24 Swedish counties between 1860 and 2009. Our findings indicate that the Swedish regional wage differentials were a great deal larger in the 1860s than in the 2000s. Most of the compression took place between the 1860s and World War I, as well as in the 1930s and during World War II. Differences in expenditures on housing impact on our assessment of convergence in the post-World War II decades: the nominal measure declines, while the real one stays constant. Our concluding discussion engages with the assumption that before World War I, regional wage convergence was associated with labour mobility, spurred by improved communication and transportation technologies as well as by the implementation of modern employment contracts. In the 1930s and 1940s, in contrast, regional wage convergence can be traced to high unionisation and centralised collective bargaining in the labour market, two distinguishing features of the Swedish Model.