This paper explores the existence of downward real wage rigidity (DRWR) in 19 OECD countries, over the period 1973-1999, using data for hourly nominal earnings at the industry level. Based on a nonparametric statistical method, which allows for country- and year-specific variation in both the...

Nominal wage stickiness is an important component of recent medium-scale macroeconomic models, but to date there has been little microeconomic evidence supporting the assumption of sluggish nominal wage adjustment. We present evidence on the frequency of nominal wage adjustment using data from...

The closed and open economy literatures both work on evaluating the role of real rigidities, but in parallel. This paper brings the two literatures together. We use international price data and exchange rate shocks to evaluate the importance of real rigidities in price setting. We show that,...

Systematic differences in the timing of wage setting decisions among industrialized countries provide an ideal framework to study the importance of wage rigidity in the transmission of monetary policy. The Japanese Shunto presents the best-known case of bunching in wage setting decisions: From...

This paper experimentally examines whether looking at other people's pricing decisions is a type of heuristic - a decisionmaking rule - that people use even when it is not applicable, as in the case of clearly private value goods. We find evidence that this is indeed the case - an individual's...

Refet Gürkaynak, Brian Sack, and Eric Swanson (2005) provide empirical evidence that long forward nominal rates are overly sensitive to monetary policy shocks, and that this is consistent with a model where long-term inflation expectations are not anchored because agents must infer the central...

This paper studies the effects of tariffs on intra-firm trade. Building on the Antràs and Helpman (2004) North-South theoretical framework, I show that higher Northern tariffs reduce the incentives for outsourcing and offshoring, while higher Southern tariffs have the opposite effects. I also...

Shiller (2003) and others have argued for the creation of financial instruments that allow households to insure risks associated with their lifetime labor income. In this paper, we argue that while the purpose of such assets is to smooth consumption across states of nature, one must also...

This paper analyzes optimal monetary policy under precommitment in a state-dependent pricing (SDP) environment. Under SDP, monopolistically competitive firms are allowed to endogenously change the timing of price adjustments. I show that this endogenous timing of price adjustment alters the...

The public phase of a capital campaign is typically launched with the announcement of a large seed donation. Andreoni (1998) argues that such a fundraising strategy may be particularly effective when funds are being raised for projects that have fixed production costs. The reason is that the...