Empirically, sales are I(1). Starting from this fact, we derive three startling results. First, the variance of production is equal to the variance of sales in the long run. Second, this result holds regardless of the strength of production smoothing, stockout avoidance, or cost shocks. Third,...

This paper shows that plausible modifications to the Taylor rule for monetary policy can help explain several empirical anomalies to the behavior of inflation in the new--Keynesian general equilibrium model. The key anomalies considered are (1) the persistence of inflation, both in reduced form...