This paper proposes a new panel model of cross-sectional dependence. The model has a number of potential structural interpretations that relate to economic phenomena such as herding in financial markets. On an econometric level, it provides a flexible approach of modelling interactions across panel units and can generate endogenous cross-sectional dependence that can resemble the dependence tha...

We develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments, then put it to work in applications. Buyers can use cash or credit, with the former (latter) subject to the inflation tax (transaction costs). Frictions making the choice of payment method interesting also imply equilibrium price dispersion, and together these deliver closed-form solutions for money demand. The model can ...

UNLABELLED The objective of this paper is to verify the hypotheses presented in the literature on the causal relationship between inflation and its uncertainty, for the newest EU countries. To ensure the robustness of the results, in the study four models for inflation uncertainty are estimated in parallel: ARCH (1), GARCH (1,1), EGARCH (1,1,1) and PARCH (1,1,1). The Granger method is used to t...

This paper studies an advantage of commitment over discretion when a central bank observes only noisy measures of current inflation and output, in the context of an optimizing model with nominal-price stickiness. Under a commitment regime, if current policy turns out to be too expansionary (contractionary) because of the bank’s information problem, subsequent policies should be slightly contrac...

This paper analyzes some new tests of the Cagan hyperinflation–money demand model which have several advantages relative to those in the literature. They do not confound specification error with rational bubbles, can be implemented with a linear procedure, and are frequently able to detect periodically collapsing bubbles which have challenged existing tests. After a Monte Carlo analysis, the te...

This paper uses over two years of weekly scanner data from two small US cities to characterize time and state dependence of grocers’ pricing decisions. In these data, the probability of a nominal adjustment declines with the time since the last price change even after controlling for heterogeneity across store-product cells and replacing sale prices with regular prices. We also detect state dep...

——————————————————————————————————— We develop a model where agents can allocate their wealth between a liquid asset, which can be used to purchase consumption goods, and an illiquid asset, which represents a better store of value. Should a consumption opportunity arise, agents may visit a frictional “over-the-counter” secondary asset market where they can exchange illiquid for liquid assets. W...

A number of recent studies examining historical experiences with deflation have called into question the widely-held view that maintains deflation is economically harmful. These studies contend that a broad, historical perspective reveals a more nuanced view of deflation, one that requires taking seriously both malign and benign deflation. This paper builds on these findings by taking an in-dep...

In this paper the long-run trend in CPI inflation (core inflation) for the US over the 1960– 2000 period is estimated using a common trends model. In this framework, core inflation is interpreted and constructed as the long-run forecast of inflation conditional on the information contained in nominal money growth, output fluctuations and movements in the oil price. Unlike other commonly used me...

In models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. We develop a two-sector new-Keynesian model to evaluate different inflation targeting rules in economies with financial frictions. We conclude that, in the presence of financial frictions, a welfaremaximizing central bank should adopt flexible head...