In this paper we present a simple, theory-based measure of the variations in aggregate economic efficiency associated with business fluctuations. We decompose this indicator, which we refer to as 'the gap', into two constituent parts: a price markup and a wage markup, and show that the latter...

We use a DSGE model that generates endogenous movements in risk premia to examine the positive and normative implications of alternative monetary policy rules. As emphasized by the micro-finance literature, variation in risk arises because households face fixed costs of transferring cash across...

In this paper, we show that strategic complementaritiessuch as firm-specific factors or quasikinked demandhave crucial implications for the design of monetary policy and for the welfare costs of output and inflation variability. Recent research has mainly used log-linear approximations to...