Although it is well known that aggregate variables have slow-moving stochastic components, research on macroeconomic fluctuations has focused primarily on high-frequency movements of the data. I document some interesting lower-frequency facts in U.S. postwar data and investigate whether dynamic...

At low inflation rates, the main motivation for price changes is idiosyncratic shocks to firms and industries. In standard models of sticky prices, the existence of these idiosyncratic shocks makes prices more flexible and hence monetary policy less powerful to affect real variables (and less...