This paper examines the optimal frequency of monetary policy meetings when their schedule is pre-announced. Our contribution is twofold. First, we show that in the standard New Keynesian framework infrequent but periodic revision of monetary policy may be desirable even when there are no...

THE THRUST OF THIS PAPER HAS BEEN TO INVESTIGATE THE THEORETICAL PROPOSITION OF THE MONETARY APPROACH TO THE THEORY OF BALANCE OF PAYMENTS ADJUSTMENT MECHANISM. THE ESSENCE OF THE APPROACH IS A CONSISTENT INSISTENCE THAT BALANCE OF PAYMENTS IS A MONETARY AND NOT A REAL PHENOMENON AS POSITED BY...

Financial dollarization creates design problems for economic policy as increases the level of financial vulnerability. However, countries with high levels of dollarization have done almost nothing to reduce it. In this paper we study two ways to do it and we evaluate them within a model that...

Freeman (1996) formulates a model in which payment arrangements based on intermediated debt that is settled using money can achieve higher welfare than direct money payment achieves. Freeman finds that a monetary authority can sometimes further improve welfare, and achieve efficiency, by...

Unanticipated inflation or deflation causes one party of a nominal contract to gain at the expense of the other party, an effect absent in macroeconomic models with one representative consumer or with consumers having identical consumption. In this paper's general dynamic and stochastic...

In spite of elaborate descriptive and correlational studies, the most ubiquitous phenomenon in economics, namely inflation, has remained unexplained in terms of its mathematical origins. Keynes had attempted to relate inflation to a mechanism of "sticky wages and prices". Hitherto, such theories...

We use store-level data to document the exact process of changing prices and to directly measure menu costs at five multi-store supermarket chains. We show that changing prices in these establishments is a complex process, requiring dozens of steps and a nontrivial amount of resources. The menu...

The paper develops a Romer-type growth model with a research sector, a manufacturing sector, and a financial sector and shows that inflation has an adverse effect on economic growth. Higher inflation increases the incentives for agents to use money substitutes through financial services in an...

We combine two data sets to study price rigidity. The first consists of weekly time series of retail, wholesale, and spot prices for twelve products. These time series contain two exogenous cost shocks. We find that prices exhibit more rigidity in response to the second shock than the first. The...

SINCE 1930, EXPECTATIONS HAVE PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN ECONOMIC THEORY AND THIS IS BECAUSE ECONOMICS IS GENERALLY CONCERNED WITH THE IMPLICATIONS OF CURRENT ACTIONS FOR THE FUTURE. THIS PAPER THEREFORE ARGUES THAT THE DEVELOPMENT OF RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS THEORY WILL MAKE A MORE SIGNIFICANT...