This paper presents a model of a multi-sector economy in which each sector is characterized by a different type of wage or price stickiness. The various sectors experience the same exogenous shocks and have the same money supply. The analysis shows demand shocks pose no serious problems for...

In Monetary Policy, leading monetary economists discuss applied aspects of monetary policy and offer practical new research on the timing, magnitude, and channels of central banking actions. Some of the papers in this volume evaluate a variety of policy rules based on monetary aggregates,...

Central bank credibility plays a pivotal role in much of the modern literature on monetary policy, yet it is difficult to measure or even assess objectively. A survey of central bankers was conducted to determine their attitudes on two important issues: why credibility matters, and how...

This paper reports preliminary results from a large research project on business pricing which is currently underway. The idea is to use interviews with actual price setters to assess the validity of a dozen theories of price stickiness. The rather unorthodox (for economists) methodology is...

It is argued that policymakers, macroeconomists and microeconomists should all take high unemployment more seriously. The shortcomings of existing theories of unemployment are discussed, and a new definition of involuntary unemployment is proposed. A model is sketched in which falling aggregate...

When empirical stock-adjustment models of manufacturers' inventories of finished goods are estimated, there appear to be two local minima in the sum of squared residuals functions. At one local minimum, the estimated adjustment speed is typically quite high; at the other, it is typically quite...

This paper presents two macro models in which central bank policy has real effects on the supply side of the economy due to credit rationing. In each model, there are two possible regimes, depending on whether credit is or is not rationed. Starting from an unrationed equilibrium, either a large...

The production smoothing model of inventory behavior has a long and venerable history, and theoretical foundations which seem very strong. Yet certain overwhelming facts seem not only to defy explanation within the production smoothing framework, but actually to argue that the basic idea of...