An analysis of a one-period, two-sector model in which firms must pay a fixed cost of hiring. The authors show that this type of model results in more employment variability and less-procyclical wages than do models without fixed hiring costs.

Quality of governance has been found to be significant in economic growth. We investigate, using a threshold technique, whether the quality of governance matters equally across all levels of economic development. We find that the quality of governance is most significant for only a subset of...

The real wage is acyclical. This fact is inconsistent with standard theories which assume a single shock drives the cycle and predict either a strong pro or countercyclical real wage. This paper tests the hypothesis that the real wage is acyclical because there are several shocks, some with...

This paper investigates whether the U.S. has become more globalized and if so whether that increased globalization has helped hold down inflation and prolong the current economic expansion. We find that U.S. globalization, which has been rising significantly over the past four decades, surged...

This paper proposes and investigates the "asynchronization hypothesis," which predicts that an asynchronized shock tends to have a stronger and longer effect on the U.S. business cycle than an internationally synchronized shock. The hypothesis finds empirical support in the impulse responses of...

This paper investigates the cross-sectional distribution of inflation forecasts errors over the period 1984–2007. Our working hypothesis is that the Fed's movement toward greater transparency starting in the mid-1990s likely affected both the distribution of forecast errors and the location of...

This paper presents evidence on the persistence of inflation in the United States over the period 1947- 2010. Of particular interest is whether the persistence of inflation has changed over that time period. We use a reduced form approach to measuring inflation persistence, modeling inflation as...

Previous research comparing the Fed's Greenbook forecasts with a median forecast from a private-sector panel has found that the Fed's forecasts are superior. These comparisons potentially miss information from other parts of the distribution of forecast errors. We compare the Fed's forecast...

In this paper we jointly evaluate the Federal Reserve staff forecasts of U.S. real output growth and the inflation rate, assuming that the forecasts are to be used as inputs for the Taylor rule. Our simple methodology generates “policy forecast errors” which have a direct interpretation for...