The Great Recession and current pandemic have focused attention on the constraint on nominal interest rates from the effective lower bound. This has renewed interest in monetary policies that embed makeup strategies, such as price-level or average-inflation targeting. This paper examines the properties of average-inflation targeting in a two-agent New Keynesian (TANK) model in which a fraction of firms have adaptive expectations. We examine the optimal degree of history dependence under average-inflation targeting and find it to be relatively short for business cycle shocks of standard magnitude and duration. In this case, we show that the properties of the economy are quantitatively similar to those under a price-level target.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank conference participants at the 2013 Canadian Economics Association Meeting, Alok Johri, Bill Scarth and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.iii AbstractWe add agency costs as in Carlstrom and Fuerst (1997) into a two-country, two-good international business-cycle model. In our model, changes in the relative price of investment arise endogenously. Despite the fact that technology shocks are uncorrelated across countries, the relative price of investment is positively correlated across countries in our model, much as it is in detrended U.S./euro area data. We also find that the financial frictions tend to increase the volatility of the terms of trade and the international correlations of consumption, hours worked, output and investment. We then compare this model to an alternative model that also includes risk shocks à la Christiano, Motto and Rostango (2014). We use credit spread data (for the United States) to calibrate the AR(1) process for risk shocks. We find that risk shocks are too small to significantly impact the model's dynamics. JEL classification: E22, E32, E44, F44 Bank classification: Business fluctuations and cycles; International topics RésuméDans un modèle de cycle économique à deux pays et à deux biens, nous intégrons des coûts de délégation à la manière de Carlstrom et Fuerst (1997). Dans notre modèle, les variations du prix relatif de l'investissement sont endogènes. Malgré l'absence de corrélation entre les chocs technologiques spécifiques aux pays, les prix relatifs de l'investissement sont positivement corrélés dans les deux pays, à l'instar de ce que l'on observe pour le couple États-Unis-zone euro dans les données dépouillées de leur composante tendancielle. Nous constatons également que les frictions financières ont tendance à accroître la volatilité des termes de l'échange et les corrélations de la consommation, des heures travaillées, de la production et de l'investissement entre pays. Nous comparons ensuite les résultats obtenus à ceux d'une variante du modèle dans laquelle sont incorporés des chocs de risque à la manière de Christiano, Motto et Rostango (2014). Nous employons des données relatives aux écarts de crédit aux États-Unis pour calibrer un processus autorégressif d'ordre 1 pour les chocs de risque. Il ressort de notre analyse que l'ampleur des chocs de risque est trop faible pour exercer une influence notable sur la dynamiqu...
The existence of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) has often been used to justify a positive inflation target. It is traditionally assumed that positive inflation could "grease the wheels" of the labour market by putting downward pressure on real wages, easing labour market adjustments during a recession. A rise in the inflation target would attenuate the long-run level of unemployment and hasten economic recovery after an adverse shock. Following Daly and Hobijn (2014), we re-examine these issues in a model that accounts for precautionary motives in wage-setting behaviour. We confirm that DNWR generates a long-run negative relationship between inflation and unemployment, in line with previous contributions to the literature. However, we also find that the increase in the number of people bound by DNWR following a negative demand shock rises with the inflation target, offsetting the beneficial effects a higher inflation target has on closing the unemployment gap. As an implication, contrary to previous contributions that neglected precautionary behaviour, the speed at which unemployment returns back to pre-crisis levels during recessions is relatively unaffected by variations in the inflation target.Résumé. Rigidité à la baisse des salaires nominaux au Canada: résultats remettant en question l'effet de lubrification. L'existence de la rigidité à la baisse des salaires nominaux (RBSN) a souvent été utilisée pour justifier une cible d'inflation positive. Traditionnellement on présume qu'une inflation positive peut "lubrifier les rouages" du marché du travail en mettant une pression à la baisse sur les salaires réels, facilitant ainsi les ajustements dans le marché du travail au cours d'une récession. Un accroissement dans la cible d'inflation atténuerait l'effet à long terme sur le niveau de chômage et pourrait accélérer la reprise après un choc adverse. À la suite de Daly et Hobijn (2014), l'auteur réexamine ces questions dans un modèle qui tient compte du motif de précaution dans le comportement de détermination des salaires. On confirme que la RBSN génère une relation négative à long terme entre inflation et chômage, résultat déjà inscrit dans la littérature spécialisée. Cependant on découvre aussi que le nombre de personnes frappées par la RBSN à la suite d'un choc négatif dans la demande augmente à proportion que la cible d'inflation augmente, compensant les effets bénéfiques d'une cible d'inflation accrue
In order to identify investment-specific technology (IST), most DSGE models assume a perfect inverse relationship between IST and the relative price of investment (RPI). This paper explores this relationship and provides evidence that the RPI also responds to changes in market power, which I find constitutes a third of volatility in the RPI. To corroborate this conclusion, two competing models are produced; the first is a two-sector model with a wedge separating the identification of IST with the inverse of the RPI. The RPI wedge is then estimated using Bayesian estimation techniques. A second, richer two-sector model is produced, where firms can vary markups depending on the number of competitors. This paper finds that changes in relative markups are highly correlated with the RPI wedge and help explain the sudden increase in the RPI following the Great Recession in the United States. In addition, with endogenous price markups, non-IST shocks can explain over a third of the volatility observed in the RPI, with marginal efficiency of investment contributing approximately 30 percent of the volatility in the RPI.
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