Monetary policy implications of state-dependent prices and wages
Costain, James ; Nakov, Anton ; Petit, Borja
ECB - Frankfurt am Main
2019
57 p.
monetary policy ; labour cost ; price ; wages
Working Paper
2272
Financing and monetary policy
English
Bibliogr.
"We study the effects of monetary shocks in a model of state-dependent price and wage adjustment based on “control costs”. Suppliers of retail goods and of labor are both monopolistic competitors that face idiosyncratic productivity shocks and nominal rigidities. Stickiness arises because precise decisions are costly, so agents choose to tolerate small errors in the timing of adjustments. Our simulations are calibrated to microdata on the size and frequency of price and wage changes. Money shocks have less persistent real effects in our state-dependent model than they would a time-dependent framework, but nonetheless we obtain sufficient monetary nonneutrality for consistency with macroeconomic evidence. Nonneutrality is primarily driven by wage rigidity, rather than price rigidity. State-dependent nominal rigidity implies a flatter Phillips curve as trend inflation declines, because nominal adjustments become less frequent, making short-run inflation less reactive to shocks."
Digital
The ETUI is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ETUI.