This paper proposes two models in which price stickiness arises endogenously even though firms are free to change their prices at zero physical cost. Firms are subject to idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks, and they also face a risk of making errors when they set their prices. In our first...

In this paper, we show that a simple model of smoothly state-dependent pricing generates a distribution of price adjustments similar to that observed in microeconomic data, both for low and high inflation. Our setup is based on one fundamental assumption: price adjustment is more likely when it...

We propose a near-rational model of retail price adjustment consistent with microeconomic and macroeconomic evidence on price dynamics. Our framework is based on the idea that avoiding errors in decision making is costly. Given our assumed cost function for error avoidance, the timing of firms'...

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...

This paper analyzes the effects of monetary shocks in a DSGE model that allows for a general form of smoothly state-dependent pricing by firms. As in Dotsey, King, and Wolman (1999) and Caballero and Engel (2007), our setup is based on one fundamental property: firms are more likely to adjust...

This paper models a near-rational agent who chooses from a set of feasible alternatives, subject to a cost function for precise decision-making. Unlike previous papers in the "control costs" tradition, here the cost of decisions is explicitly interpreted in terms of time. That is, by choosing...

We study simple fiscal rules for stabilizing the government debt level in response to asymmetric demand shocks in a country that belongs to a currency union. We compare debt stabilization through tax rate adjustments with debt stabilization through expenditure changes. While rapid and flexible...

Motivated by the failure of fiscal rules to eliminate deficit bias in the euro area, this paper analyzes an alternative policy regime in which each Member State government delegates at least one fiscal instrument to an independent authority with a mandate to avoid excessive debt. Other fiscal...

This paper studies the effects of delegating control of sovereign debt issuance to an independent authority in a monetary union where public spending decisions are decentralized. The model assumes that no policy makers are capable of commitment to a rule. However, consistent with Rogoff (1985)...

The highly asymmetric reaction of euro area yield curves to the announcement of the ECB’s pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP) is hard to reconcile with the standard 'duration risk extraction' view of the transmission of central banks’ asset purchase policies. This observation...