Inflation has fallen dramatically in countries like Spain and Italy over the last decade, but the rate of increase in "home good" prices remains stubbornly higher than the rate of increase in "traded good" prices. The paper begins by showing that this discrepancy can be explained (at least in...

We decompose the low-frequency movements in labour productivity into an investment-neutral and investment-specific technology component. We show that neutral technology shocks cause a short run increase in job creation and job destruction and leads to a reduction in aggregate employment....

A major criticism of standard specifications of price adjustment in models for monetary policy analysis is that they violate the natural rate hypothesis by allowing output to differ from potential in steady state. In this paper we estimate a dynamic optimizing business cycle model whose...

Galí and Gertler (1999) developed a hybrid variant of the New Keynesian Phillips curve that relates inflation to real marginal cost, expected future inflation and lagged inflation. GMM estimates of the model suggest that forward looking behavior is dominant: The coefficient on expected future...

In this paper we measure, at sectoral level, the sources of Spanish productivity growth, distinguishing among the roles played by labor productivity, the degree of factor substitution and total factor productivity (Solow residual). In terms of value added, total factor productivity growth in the...

We examine the role of money in three environments: the New Keynesian model with separable utility and static money demand; a nonseparable utility variant with habit formation; and a version with adjustment costs for holding real balances. The last two variants imply forward-looking behavior of...

We analyze the effects of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks on hours worked and unemployment. We characterize the response of unemployment in terms of job separation and job finding rates. We find that job separation rates mainly account for the impact response of unemployment...

In this paper we present some descriptive evidence and simulation exercises with both an estimated backward looking model and a calibrated general equilibrium forward looking model that allow some light to be shed on the determinants and macroeconomic implications of persistent inflation...

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, we characterize de Fed's systematic response to technology shocks and its implications for US output, hours and inflation. Second we evaluate the extent to which that responses can be accounted for by a simple monetary policy rule in the...

This paper looks at the long term output effect of those monetary policies aimed at reducing inflation from its peak by late seventies, in nine major OECD countries. The estimated effect depends on the way nominal shocks are identified. Alternatively to the cross-country regression analysis we...