This paper evaluates the performance of optimal simple policy rules in the presence of news shocks. It is shown that the inclusion of forward-looking elements enhances the performance of simple optimized interest rate rules when agents learn about future disturbances in advance. We provide a rationale for this result by demonstrating that, if shocks are news shocks, the optimal unrestricted con...

In this article consumers need money to reduce their transaction costs. We highlight the existence of indeterminacy under a constant money growth within an endogenous growth framework. Real indeterminacy is avoided by an alternative monetary policy such as the interest pegging. The residual price indeterminacy is also ruled out if this monetary policy is completed by a non-Ricardian ...scal pol...

The extremely weak propagation mechanisms of real business cycle (RBC) models are well acknowledged, and some effort has been devoted to improving the models on this dimension. This paper builds on these efforts to provide an explicit explanation of why various existing RBC models do not replicate real world business cycles, and discusses modifications necessary to bring real business cycle the...

Fairness, Reciprocity, and Wage Rigidity This paper contains a review of empirical work related to wage rigidity, where researchers have collected their own data. The work includes field studies, economic experiments, and psychological surveys. Economists have done the field studies and experiments, and management scientists and experimental psychologists have done the surveys. There is a remar...

In the U.S. labor market, the vacancy-unemployment ratio and employment react sluggishly to productivity shocks. We show that the job matching model in its standard form cannot reproduce these patterns due to excessively rapid vacancy responses. Extending the model to incorporate sunk costs for vacancy creation yields highly realistic dynamics. Creation costs induce entrant firms to smooth the ...

In the U.S. labor market, the vacancy-unemployment ratio and employment react sluggishly to productivity shocks. We show that the job matching model in its standard form cannot reproduce these patterns due to excessively rapid vacancy responses. Extending the model to incorporate sunk costs for vacancy creation yields highly realistic dynamics. Creation costs induce entrant firms to smooth the ...

This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on aggregate employment by exploiting cross-state variation in maximum benefit duration during Great Recession. Comparing adjacent counties located neighboring states, there is no statistically significant increasing UI generosity employment. Point estimates are uniformly small magnitude, and most precise rule out employment-to-popul...

This paper presents a novel and unique measure of cross-sectional uncertainty constructed from stock options on individual firms. Cross-sectional varied little between 1980 1995 subsequently had three distinct peaks—during the tech boom, financial crisis, coronavirus epidemic. has mixed relationship with overall economic activity, aggregate is much more powerful for forecasting growth. The data...

We provide a new channel through which monetary policy has distributional consequences at business cycle frequencies. show that an unexpected easing increases labor income inequality between high-skilled and less-skilled workers. To rationalize these findings, we build New Keynesian DSGE model with asymmetric search-and-matching (SAM) frictions capital-skill complementarity (CSC) in production....

We investigate the susceptibility of democracies to demagogues, studying tensions between representatives who guard voters’ long-run interests and demagogues cater short-run desires. Parties propose consumption investment. Voters base choices on current-period valence shocks. Younger/poorer economies economically disadvantaged voters are attracted demagogue’s disinvestment policies, forcing far...