Open Access
Wage stickiness and unemployment fluctuations: an alternative approach
(2009) Casares Polo, Miguel; Moreno Pérez, Antonio; Vázquez, Jesús; Economía; Ekonomia
Erceg, Henderson and Levin (2000, Journal of Monetary Economics) introduce sticky wages in a New-Keynesian general-equilibrium model. Alternatively, it is shown here how wage stickiness may bring unemployment fluctuations into a New-Keynesian model. Using Bayesian econometric techniques, both models are estimated with U.S. quarterly data of the Great Moderation. Estimation results are similar and provide a good empirical fit with the crucial difference that our proposal delivers unemployment fluctuations. Thus, second-moment statistics of U.S. unemployment are replicated reasonably well in our proposed New-Keynesian model with sticky wages. In the welfare analysis, the cost of cyclical fluctuations during the Great Moderation is estimated at 0.60% of steady-state consumption.
Open Access
Wage setting actors, sticky wages, and optimal monetary policy
(2007) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
Following Erceg et al. (2000), sticky wages are generally modelled assuming that households set wage contracts à la Calvo (1983). This paper compares that sticky-wage model with one where wage contracts are set by firms, assuming flexible prices in any case. The key variable for wage dynamics moves from the marginal rate of substitution (households set wages) to the marginal product of labor (firms set wages). Optimal monetary policy in both cases fully stabilizes wage inflation and the output gap after technology or preference innovations. However, nominal shocks make the assumption on who set wages relevant for optimal monetary policy.
Open Access
Dynamic analysis in an optimizing monetary model with transaction costs and endogenous investment
(2001) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper analyzes the period-to-period changes that occur in an optimizing monetary model with uncertainty and sticky prices. Money is incorporate in its role as a medium of exchange through a time-cost transactions technology. Another important characteristic of the model is that both capital and investment are obtained endogenously. In this regard, adjustment costs of installing investment are incorporated to smooth and delay capital movements over the economic cycle. We will focus attention on analyzing the consumption, investment and real money demand functions resulting from the model. These three equations give rise to the structural IS-LM economy as part of the general equilibrium described in the paper. Nominal prices are sticky, i.e., they do not adjust instantly thereby allowing departures from general equilibrium obtained when there is absence of nominal frictions. We chose to have the Fuhrer-Moore specification for nominal contract prices. The model is calibrated on quarterly observations from United States data. Four types of exogenous shocks are included in our setup: production technology shocks, consumption preference (demand) shocks, monetary policy shocks, and shopping time shocks. Hence, variability of output, consumption, investment, etc., may result from several sources. The impact of each shock in the economic cycle will be examined by plotting impulse-response functions implied by the solutions of the model.
Open Access
Sticky prices, sticky wages, and also unemployment
(2008) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper shows a New Keynesian model where wages are set at the value that matches household's labor supply with firm's labor demand. Subsequently, wage stickiness brings industry-level unemployment fluctuations. After aggregation, the rate of wage inflation is negatively related to unemployment, as in the original Phillips (1958) curve, with an additional term that provides forward-looking dynamics. The supply-side of the model can be captured with dynamic expressions equivalent to those obtained in Erceg, Henderson, and Levin (2000), though with different slope coefficients. Impulse-response functions from a technology shock illustrate the interactions between sticky prices, sticky wages and unemployment.
Open Access
Monopolistic competition, sticky prices, and the minimal mark-up in steady state
(2007) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
This note reports the rate of inflation that minimizes the mark-up of prices over marginal costs in the steady-state solution of a monopolistic competition model with either Taylor (1980) or Calvo (1983) pricing. The minimal mark-up is always found at a positive and low rate of inflation for any sensible parameter calibration. Actually, the rate of inflation that minimizes the mark-up is very close to ratio between the real rate of discount and the Dixit-Stiglitz elasticity. This result is robust to altenative sticky-price specifications.
Open Access
Business cycle and monetary policy analysis in a structural sticky price model of the euro area
(2001) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
Structural models are a powerful tool for business cycle and monetary policy analysis because they are assumed to be invariant to either policy changes or external shocks. In this paper, we derive a neoclassical monetary model in which both the demand and supply side are structural in the sense that the behavioral equations obtained are rigorously calculated from optimizing decisions of the individuals. Moreover, we introduce price stickiness on the supply side decisions so as to have relevant short-run real effects of monetary policy through the real interest rate channel. The resulting medium-size model will be calibrated and estimated for the euro area economies. As two examples of the applications of the model for the euro area, some simulations on business cycle and monetary policy analysis will be carried out.
Open Access
A new Keynesian analysis of industrial employment fluctuations
(2009) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper describes a model with sticky prices, search frictions and hours-clearing wages that provides firm differentiation across several dimensions: price, output, wage, employment and hours per worker. The connection between pricing and hiring decisions results in firm-level employment fluctuations that depend upon sticky prices, search costs, demand elasticity and labor supply elasticity. The calibrated model is able to match average US industrial employment volatility when assuming a small industrial size, providing one possible answer to Shimer (2005a)’s puzzle.
Open Access
Long run analysis in alternative optimizing monetary models
(2001) Casares Polo, Miguel; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper explores the transmission channel from monetary variables to real variables in the steady-rate equilibria of various neoclassical optimizing models with money. The existence of superneutrality is rejected for the four models at hand: time-cost transactions approach, output-cost transactions approach, money in the utility function model, and cash-in-advance model. However, the real effects of high rates of inflation are not large: output, consumption, and investment slightly fall with higher inflation rates. In addition, the welfare cost of inflation is calculated for annual rates of inflation ranging from 0% to 50%. Three of the models (all but the cash-in-advance model) agree on the following result: a 10% rate of inflation creates a permanent welfare cost equal to 0.3% of GPD per year.