E31 - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

• Real and Nominal Frictions within the Firm: How Lumpy Investment Matters for Price Adjustment

  Staff Working Paper 2009-36 Michael K. Johnston

  Real rigidities are an important feature of modern sticky price models and are policy-relevant because of their welfare consequences, but cannot be structurally identified from time series. I evaluate the plausibility of capital specificity as a source of real rigidities using a two-dimensional generalized (s,S) model calibrated to micro evidence.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E1, E12, E2, E22, E3, E31

• Resurrecting the Role of Real Money Balance Effects

  Staff Working Paper 2009-24 José Dorich

  I present a structural econometric analysis supporting the hypothesis that money is still relevant for shaping inflation and output dynamics in the United States. In particular, I find that real money balance effects are quantitatively important, although smaller than they used to be in the early postwar period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary aggregates, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52

• Structural Inflation Models with Real Wage Rigidities: The Case of Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2009-21 Jean-Marie Dufour, Lynda Khalaf, Maral Kichian

  Real wage rigidities have recently been proposed as a way of building intrinsic persistence in inflation within the context of New Keynesian Phillips Curves. Using two recent illustrative structural models, we evaluate empirically the importance of real wage rigidities in the data and the extent to which such models provide useful information regarding price stickiness.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C5, C52, E, E3, E31

• Adopting Price-Level Targeting under Imperfect Credibility in ToTEM

  Staff Working Paper 2009-17 Gino Cateau, Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Malik Shukayev, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  Using the Bank of Canada's main projection and policy-analysis model, ToTEM, this paper measures the welfare gains of switching from inflation targeting to price-level targeting under imperfect credibility. Following the policy change, private agents assign a probability to the event that the policy-maker will revert to inflation-targeting next period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy implementation JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52

• Real Effects of Price Stability with Endogenous Nominal Indexation

  Staff Working Paper 2009-16 Césaire Meh, Vincenzo Quadrini, Yaz Terajima

  We study a model with repeated moral hazard where financial contracts are not fully indexed to inflation because nominal prices are observed with delay as in Jovanovic & Ueda (1997).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets, Monetary policy framework, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E3, E31, E4, E44, E5, E52

• Information Flows and Aggregate Persistence

  Staff Working Paper 2009-11 Oleksiy Kryvtsov

  Models with imperfect information that generate persistent monetary nonneutrality predominantly rely on assumptions leading to substantial heterogeneity of information across price-setters. This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium model in which the degree of heterogeneity of information is determined endogenously.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Inflation and prices, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D8, D83, E, E3, E31, E32

• Inventories and Real Rigidities in New Keynesian Business Cycle Models

  Staff Working Paper 2009-9 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Virgiliu Midrigan

  Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2008) study the behavior of inventories in an economy with menu costs, fixed ordering costs and the possibility of stock-outs. This paper extends their analysis to a richer setting that is capable of more closely accounting for the dynamics of the US business cycle.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, F, F1, F12

• Assessing Indexation-Based Calvo Inflation Models

  Staff Working Paper 2009-7 Jean-Marie Dufour, Lynda Khalaf, Maral Kichian

  Using identification-robust methods, the authors estimate and evaluate for Canada and the United States various classes of inflation equations based on generalized structural Calvo-type models. The models allow for different forms of frictions and vary in their assumptions regarding the type of price indexation adopted by firms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Inflation and prices JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C5, C52, E, E3, E31

• Inventories, Markups, and Real Rigidities in Menu Cost Models

  Staff Working Paper 2009-6 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Virgiliu Midrigan

  Real rigidities that limit the responsiveness of real marginal cost to output are a key ingredient of sticky price models necessary to account for the dynamics of output and inflation. We argue here, in the spirit of Bils and Kahn (2000), that the behavior of marginal cost over the cycle is directly related to that of inventories, data on which is readily available.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, F, F1, F12